THA requests $135M to retain CEPEP, URP-styled programme

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has sig­nalled that state-fund­ed em­ploy­ment pro­grammes like the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and a suc­ces­sor to the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) will con­tin­ue on the is­land, as it has re­quest­ed a com­bined $135.25 mil­lion for the ini­tia­tives in its fis­cal 2027 bud­get pro­pos­als.

Pre­sent­ing the THA’s bud­get re­quest yes­ter­day, Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance, Trade and the Econ­o­my Petal-Ann Roberts an­nounced that $91.9 mil­lion has been ear­marked for a new Pro­gramme for In­fra­struc­ture Up­grade in Ur­ban and Rur­al Com­mu­ni­ties (IU­URC), which will con­tin­ue work pre­vi­ous­ly car­ried out un­der the URP.

And, CEPEP has been re­tained with an al­lo­ca­tion of $43.35 mil­lion, al­though it has been moved to the new Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty. Pre­vi­ous­ly, it was un­der the di­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment.

The al­lo­ca­tions were un­veiled as Roberts pre­sent­ed a pro­posed THA bud­get of $4.12 bil­lion for fis­cal 2027.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment phased out the tra­di­tion­al CEPEP and URP frame­works in Trinidad in mid-2025 as part of a sweep­ing, con­tro­ver­sial re­struc­tur­ing aimed at what the Gov­ern­ment said was to dis­man­tle sys­temic cor­rup­tion, “ghost gangs” and the crim­i­nal in­fil­tra­tion of state pro­grammes which had al­lowed gangs to ac­cess state fund­ing.

The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) con­demned the move as a “so­cial earth­quake,” al­leg­ing that the sud­den can­cel­la­tion of con­tracts sum­mar­i­ly threw over 10,000 low-in­come work­ers, many of them sin­gle moth­ers, on­to the bread­line with­out warn­ing.

How­ev­er, speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath main­tained that the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns were not present in To­ba­go.

“The TTPS and oth­er na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies have not in­di­cat­ed to the Gov­ern­ment that the To­ba­go el­e­ments of URP and CEPEP have been in­fil­trat­ed by gangs, ghost em­ploy­ees and crim­i­nals un­der the present TPP ad­min­is­tra­tion,” Padarath said.

“They haven’t ex­pe­ri­enced the same prob­lems of crim­i­nal­i­ty, gang fund­ing and ghost em­ploy­ees like what oc­curred un­der the PNM in Trinidad.”

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has, in the past, firm­ly guar­an­teed that CEPEP and URP will not be cut in To­ba­go, re­as­sur­ing work­ers that the pro­grammes are piv­otal for the is­land’s de­vel­op­ment and were be­ing re­struc­tured to be more ef­fi­cient, pro­duc­tive, and skill-in­ten­sive.

Econ­o­mist and po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Dr Vanus James be­lieves the dif­fer­ing treat­ment of the so­cial pro­grammes in To­ba­go has less to do with crime and more to do with po­lit­i­cal re­al­i­ties.

“The rea­son it (cut­ting of CEPEP and URP) wasn’t done in To­ba­go is if they did it here, it would cause enor­mous po­lit­i­cal trou­ble for the gov­ern­ment in To­ba­go, and that’s the num­ber one rea­son I ob­serve right here in To­ba­go,” James said.

“I don’t think it had much to do with crime.”

James ar­gued that the de­bate sur­round­ing URP and CEPEP has over­shad­owed a broad­er chal­lenge fac­ing both is­lands, the lack of sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for low­er-in­come cit­i­zens.

“Nei­ther in To­ba­go nor in Trinidad have we found a prop­er so­lu­tion to the prob­lem of wide­spread un­der­em­ploy­ment and the lack of de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty for poor peo­ple,” he said.

He con­tend­ed that de­spite promis­es of re­place­ment ini­tia­tives, there is lit­tle ev­i­dence of a com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy to tran­si­tion work­ers in­to sta­ble, high­er-pay­ing jobs.

“When you scru­ti­nise the bud­get, you will find out that there is no pro­gramme, and I have not heard a whis­per about any se­ri­ous pro­gramme to cre­ate new good jobs, high-pay­ing jobs that could pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for these peo­ple if they were to up­skill,” James said.

The econ­o­mist al­so ques­tioned whether com­mit­ments made when URP and CEPEP were dis­con­tin­ued in Trinidad had been ful­filled.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had in­di­cat­ed that more sus­tain­able forms of em­ploy­ment would be de­vel­oped to re­place the pro­grammes in Trinidad.

But James said the UNC Gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal plans do not ap­pear to out­line such al­ter­na­tives.

“If you scru­ti­nise the midterm re­view, you would see that there is re­al­ly no pro­gramme de­scribed by the Gov­ern­ment in there that amounts to keep­ing the promise the Prime Min­is­ter made that she would come up with prop­er ways to em­ploy these peo­ple,” he said.

“She shut down the pro­gramme by, maybe quite cor­rect­ly, the promise of of­fer­ing, find­ing, cook­ing up bet­ter ways to em­ploy them.”

James added that he has yet to see ev­i­dence that those re­place­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties have ma­te­ri­alised.

“I have seen no re­port in the coun­try on what those bet­ter ways are as yet, and I guar­an­tee you that there are no bet­ter ways pro­vid­ed by what­ev­er the Gov­ern­ment is say­ing in To­ba­go.”