Kamla says CEPEP, URP review sparking criminal backlash and threats

Kejan Haynes

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has warned that her government’s suspension of the Community-Based Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme (CEPEP) and review of the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) has triggered pushback from what she described as the “deep state” and “the belly of the underworld.”

Speaking at a political meeting in Couva on Monday night, she said the measures, aimed at investigating and dismantling corruption, had unearthed “a resistance that reaches far and wide.”

“They will hire lawyers. They will use their political proxies. They will call in favours from influential business people and their media contacts. And they will resort to going after anyone who leads or is involved in this crackdown… They’ve already made threats to Khadijah (Ameen), to Feroz (Khan), to Barry (Padarath). But I say never fear because Kamla is here.”

Persad-Bissessar also criticised illegal dumping, urging the public to take personal responsibility for their surroundings.

“Who dumping that? Ghosts? Is it not human beings dumping in their own neighbourhood?… If you cannot clean in front of your own house, heaven help us. Some of us has become too lazy, too lazy and greedy. Cut the grass in front of your own home… We are human beings in Trinidad and Tobago, not animals. So clean up your waste.”

She said she had instructed Attorney General John Jeremie SC to “get the law working”  to “bring back” the litter wardens against offenders, adding, “as the AG always tells us, he says, ‘I’m coming for you… whoever you may be, dumping all over the country.’”

The Prime Minister linked the review of CEPEP and URP to her administration’s plans for more sustainable employment.

“They do that because they wanted to give you make work programmes… another kind of slavery… Imagine people working in CEPEP for 10 years at minimum wage. We have a mandate to fill all the vacancies across the public service, to create more meaningful jobs… so you don’t get stuck in a CEPEP syndrome for 10 years. That puts you in an oppressed position.”

Persad-Bissessar has previously rejected suggestions that the cancellation of CEPEP and URP contracts was linked to the State of Emergency (SoE) declared on 18 July.

Responding to questions from Guardian Media following a town hall meeting in Siparia on 30 July, she said the SoE was called to disrupt “a planned attack emanating from the prisons to strike at institutions of the justice system and critical organs of the State,” which intelligence officials had identified as imminent.

“The SoE was not triggered as a panacea to addressing crime and criminality in T&T per se,” she said. “We moved swiftly to neutralise this threat on the morning of the 18th July.”

Her comments followed questions about whether the widespread cancellation of social programme contracts could have provoked a backlash by criminal gangs seeking to regain access to State funds.

She acknowledged that criminal elements had infiltrated CEPEP, URP and the Reafforestation programme but she maintained the timing of the emergency measures was not tied to those reforms.

“The make-work programmes, our intel sources have indicated, is part of the feeding trough for criminals. They are under review as part of our larger plans to stem the tide of crime and criminality.”

The government suspended CEPEP operations and began recalibrating URP last month as part of its anti-corruption initiative.