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The hun­dreds of work­ers sent home last year from the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) could cre­ate a sce­nario where it will be dif­fi­cult to main­tain es­sen­tial san­i­ta­tion ser­vices for the Car­ni­val sea­son in the cap­i­tal, Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne has re­vealed.

How­ev­er, the may­or still hopes to get the job done with the staff he has with­in the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion (PoSCC) dur­ing the height of the sea­son.

Speak­ing at a PoSCC Statu­to­ry Meet­ing yes­ter­day, Al­leyne said more than 500 CEPEP and URP work­ers who were op­er­at­ing in the city were dis­missed when the Gov­ern­ment purged the sys­tems and scrapped the pro­grammes last year. He said these work­ers were sub­se­quent­ly re­placed by just 12 staff mem­bers from the new Na­tion­al Pro­gramme for the Up­keep of Pub­lic Spaces — a move he warned could jeop­ar­dise pub­lic health, san­i­ta­tion and pub­lic safe­ty.