Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) To­ba­go po­lit­i­cal leader An­cil Den­nis is ac­cus­ing the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) of plan­ning to qui­et­ly shut down 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 meet­ing in Calder Hall on Thurs­day night, Den­nis claimed the cur­rent THA ad­min­is­tra­tion in­tend­ed to stop those pro­grammes but was de­lay­ing the move for po­lit­i­cal sur­vival. He said his in­for­ma­tion was that the ad­min­is­tra­tion had al­ready agreed to end the pro­grammes, but was wait­ing un­til af­ter the elec­tion to avoid los­ing votes.

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