3-year tenure for CEPEP workers from 2019

A policy for the Community-Based Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme (CEPEP) has been approved by the Executive Council which will see participants enjoying a three-year tenure with the programme, with effect from 2019.

Secretary of Community Development, Enterprise Development and Labour, Assemblyman Marslyn Melville-Jack, in announcing this news at Wednesday’s

post Executive Council media briefing at the Administrative Complex in Calder Hall, said there has been no clear-cut policy in place to treat with CEPEP workers and their terms and conditions of work.

She said that CEPEP Tobago was never meant to provide permanent jobs but that over the years, it has become a creature of its own “in that we have persons who are employed for as long as the programme has been in existence, which at this time is about 16 years.”

“We are hopeful that by training those who come into the programme, we will empower them so that they would be able to leave at the end of or before three years and they can then become entrepreneurs of their own or they find themselves with the kind of capacity that will allow them to find long-term employment elsewhere. That would be effective from 2019, we are putting things in place towards that,” she said.

Melville-Jack also reported that CEPEP was currently involved in World Environment Day, also known as Mother Earth Day, activities, started on April 22, and will engage communities until the end of the environmental cycle until June 8, with the celebration of World Oceans’ Day.