THA accused of planning to end CEPEP and URP after elections

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

PNM To­ba­go po­lit­i­cal leader An­cil Den­nis has ac­cused the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly of in­tend­ing to qui­et­ly end the is­land’s Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP), but on­ly af­ter vot­ers head to the polls.

Speak­ing at a po­lit­i­cal town hall in Calder Hall last night, Den­nis claimed the cur­rent THA ad­min­is­tra­tion “in­tends to stop those pro­grammes” but is de­lay­ing the move for po­lit­i­cal sur­vival.

“My in­for­ma­tion is that they al­ready agreed on it, that they’re go­ing to stop the pro­grammes, but they want to wait un­til af­ter the elec­tion. Be­cause if they stop the pro­grammes now, ob­vi­ous­ly, they’re go­ing to lose some votes,” he said.

Den­nis said a PNM-led THA would main­tain both so­cial em­ploy­ment pro­grammes and, if nec­es­sary, fund them di­rect­ly from To­ba­go’s al­lo­ca­tion.

“The PNM’s po­si­tion is we start­ed those pro­grammes… we will en­sure that CEPEP and URP will con­tin­ue to be fund­ed by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly al­lo­ca­tion,” he added.

How­ev­er, last month Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Petal-Ann Roberts con­firmed that both pro­grammes will con­tin­ue, stat­ing that the As­sem­bly plans to make CEPEP and URP more sus­tain­able, ef­fi­cient, and pro­duc­tive.