A call to the government to reverse the decision it made to shut down CEPEP, which effectively placed over 10,000 people on the breadline.
It is coming from Port of Spain South Member of Parliament Keith Scotland, who says, many within his Constituency and elsewhere are struggling to survive.
We visited his Office, where an initiative was held to render aid.
00:00A full drive is on here at the Port of Spain South constituency office.
00:05We just came from inside and what I can tell you is that mainly women who were
00:10formerly employees of CPAP and were laid off are here seeking assistance.
00:17Many of them reluctant to lay bare their vulnerability in front of our camera.
00:23Some say they had worked with CPAP for as much as 13 years.
00:27Speaking up for them is a former male co-worker Hayden Charles who is 63 years old
00:33and claims to have been with CPAP since its inception.
00:36To gosh man, I was checking for the women and them jet.
00:40There are no women that be seen here and they share no money.
00:43I don't want to use the word we should use now because we are big people here now but it's not nice.
00:49Port of Spain South MP Keith Scotland senior counsel calls the termination of these workers a travesty.
00:5610,700 people on the bread line without any notice.
01:01I am not too much concerned about the shenanigans of the CPAP heads.
01:10My concern is about the workers who have been affected and by what we see is an unpardonable act by a government who went on a platform of caring.
01:23He tells us many of them now need day to day sustenance and there is an uncertainty among those with school age children over what will happen when the new academic year begins.
01:35The MP says he managed to arrange 600 hampers for distribution at his office on Tuesday.
01:42Some came from donations, some came from the purchases made out of my own limited resources.
01:48There are food items and then there are household items to have a balance.
01:55It's not, it can never be sufficient.
01:59It's not what I want to do because I want to take us out of that syndrome but for now it is pure necessity.
02:07And he is making an appeal.
02:09I really would want to ask the Honourable Prime Minister to reconsider that decision as it relates to those workers, reinstate them forthwith.
02:18Let them be able to fend for themselves.
02:22We can deal with the other issues after and I take umbrage to people who call those people collateral damage.
02:34That's an offensive comment.
02:36Asked for an update on the legal action the People's National Movement is taking on behalf of workers,
02:42Scotland will only say that a civil case is in train and that he can give an assurance that there are more to come.
02:50The MP says he has had an informal discussion with the Ministry of the People's Social Development and Family Services for these workers.
02:58But he faces a dilemma.
03:00Because you're going to those who brought us here to say help us come out of here.
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