CEPEP contract terminations spark national backlash

Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Hun­dreds of CEPEP con­tracts were ter­mi­nat­ed on Fri­day, just days af­ter the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced plans for a full au­dit of CEPEP's as­sets, con­tracts, and op­er­a­tions.

Au­dits had not been con­duct­ed since 2020, and the Gov­ern­ment claimed more than 360 CEPEP con­tracts were signed on the eve of the gen­er­al elec­tion.

The ter­mi­na­tion left over 10,000 work­ers un­em­ployed and trig­gered crit­i­cism from Op­po­si­tion MPs with­in hours of the an­nounce­ment.

In a let­ter ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Kei­th Ed­dy con­firmed the ter­mi­na­tion, stat­ing that the agree­ment dat­ed 21 March 2023 was be­ing end­ed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. He said con­trac­tors would re­ceive one month’s pay in lieu of no­tice and were in­struct­ed to re­turn com­pa­ny prop­er­ty with­in sev­en days.

In a Face­book post, San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning ex­pressed con­cern, stat­ing:

“It is with great sad­ness that I learned to­day of the ter­mi­na­tion of em­ploy­ment of CEPEP con­trac­tors, as well as those who have found tem­po­rary re­lief from this pro­gramme.”

He con­tin­ued:

“To the hard­work­ing cit­i­zens who were ter­mi­nat­ed to­day as part of broad changes made by the new ad­min­is­tra­tion to the CEPEP pro­gramme, I’d like to per­son­al­ly ex­press my thanks to you. I share your con­cerns and I am here to de­fend your in­ter­ests.”

Mean­while, Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Symone De No­br­ie­ga ex­pressed sym­pa­thy for the con­trac­tors.

“This move has ef­fec­tive­ly put over 10,500 men and women out of work. Fa­thers, moth­ers, sin­gle par­ents, and bread­win­ners are now left with­out a source of in­come. This is po­lit­i­cal ret­ri­bu­tion be­ing met­ed out to those per­ceived to be sup­port­ers of the PNM.”

De No­br­ie­ga al­so ref­er­enced a re­cent state­ment in Par­lia­ment by Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen, who said “re­al work­ers” had noth­ing to fear—re­marks De No­br­ie­ga de­scribed as a veiled threat.

For­mer For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne al­so crit­i­cised the de­ci­sion, call­ing it abrupt and warn­ing that it would

“neg­a­tive­ly af­fect com­mu­ni­ties across our na­tion.”

He added:

“This is not a win for Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

At CEPEP’s head­quar­ters in Ste. Madeleine, con­trac­tors re­ceived their of­fi­cial let­ters.

Last week, Ameen raised con­cerns about CEPEP’s op­er­a­tions. She re­vealed that of the $60 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to CEPEP, $3.5 mil­lion was used to lease an un­used build­ing al­leged­ly tied to a rel­a­tive of a for­mer se­nior min­is­ter. She fur­ther claimed that over 360 con­tracts were re­newed just days be­fore the 28 April gen­er­al elec­tion—with­out Cab­i­net ap­proval.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath sup­port­ed the au­dit, stat­ing that CEPEP un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion had be­come a “run­away horse” and a base for po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ty. He claimed some con­trac­tors earned up to $50,000 month­ly and said the pro­gramme had not filed au­dit­ed ac­counts since 2020, de­spite re­ceiv­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions in an­nu­al fund­ing.

Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein raised fur­ther is­sues re­lat­ed to the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme, al­leg­ing that con­tracts were back­dat­ed, im­prop­er­ly signed, or miss­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion.