A group of frus­trat­ed for­mer CEPEP, URP, and Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Pro­gramme work­ers is call­ing on au­thor­i­ties to fast-track mea­sures so they can put food on the ta­ble. Many of them were among over 190,000 ap­pli­cants seek­ing em­ploy­ment through the Gov­ern­ment’s job re­cruit­ment dri­ve.

Moth­er of one, Sha­nia Charles, worked with the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme through Mar­ryshow Main­te­nance Ltd for four years, start­ing as a labour­er and lat­er pro­mot­ed to fore­man. She said every day has been a strug­gle since the Gov­ern­ment dis­con­tin­ued the pro­gramme and ter­mi­nat­ed all con­trac­tors, leav­ing thou­sands of work­ers on the bread­line.

As a re­sult, she said, she had to scale back on many things, in­clud­ing ex­tra class­es for her six-year-old daugh­ter.