CEPEP workers fight back

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les will host a le­gal clin­ic for ter­mi­nat­ed Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) con­trac­tors to­day, as more Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) at­tor­neys—in­clud­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young—pre­pare to mount a le­gal de­fence on their be­half.

Ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease post­ed to so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day by PNM la­dy vice chair­man Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, Beck­les will be ac­com­pa­nied by a pan­el of at­tor­neys. They will con­sult with all af­fect­ed con­trac­tors at the Lisas Gar­dens Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Cou­va, from 10 am.

This fol­lows the fir­ing of over 300 CEPEP con­trac­tors on Fri­day, a move which is said to af­fect over 10,000 em­ploy­ees un­der them, days af­ter Gov­ern­ment an­nounced a full au­dit of the pro­gramme’s as­sets, con­tracts and op­er­a­tions.

Tak­ing to his Face­book page, Young post­ed, “I have been con­tact­ed by many af­fect­ed cit­i­zens. To do this to fam­i­lies, in­clud­ing thou­sands of par­ents, is sim­ply cru­el, in­hu­mane and wrong.

“I shall be re­view­ing this vic­tim­i­sa­tion from a le­gal per­spec­tive to es­tab­lish what ac­tion can be brought against CEPEP Ltd and the Gov­ern­ment for these pre­ma­ture and cru­el ter­mi­na­tions.”

Young not­ed that the “con­tin­ued as­sault” and “vin­dic­tive be­hav­iour” of the Gov­ern­ment “must not re­main un­chal­lenged,” but stopped short of in­di­cat­ing whether he will pur­sue the mat­ter in­de­pen­dent­ly or un­der the lead­er­ship of the Op­po­si­tion Leader.

Roger Boynes, who failed in his bid for PNM chair­man­ship at last week’s in­ter­nal elec­tions, al­so con­demned the dis­missals as cru­el.

He told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that he is be­ing guid­ed by a le­gal team—in­clud­ing San­jiv Bood­hu, an­oth­er failed PNM in­ter­nal elec­tion can­di­date—that is cur­rent­ly re­view­ing the CEPEP ter­mi­na­tion let­ters, orig­i­nal con­tracts and sup­port­ing doc­u­ments.

Boynes has al­so called on all will­ing at­tor­neys with­in the par­ty to step for­ward and join the le­gal ef­fort.

“We are reach­ing out to all of the PNM at­tor­neys, in­clud­ing Mr Young, who have asked and who, in fact, is will­ing to as­sist. Any PNM at­tor­neys that are will­ing to as­sist in the way for­ward in terms of help­ing these con­trac­tors, we cer­tain­ly will wel­come all hands on deck. Be­cause at the end of the day, they are not just PNM con­trac­tors, they are con­trac­tors, they are cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Not­ing that he be­gan work on the mat­ter three weeks ago and has since com­plet­ed a le­gal opin­ion and pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter, set to be for­ward­ed to Young, Boynes as­sured the pub­lic that the PNM re­mains unit­ed, even as par­al­lel le­gal ef­forts move for­ward.

He said a meet­ing will be held this week with the con­trac­tors who have signed on to the le­gal ef­fort.

“We have reached an ad­vanced stage. We have al­ready had con­trac­tors who have signed a re­tain­er with us even though we’re do­ing it pro bono. We have al­ready reached an ad­vanced stage. I on­ly just saw, a short while ago (yes­ter­day), where the Op­po­si­tion Leader is hav­ing a meet­ing to­mor­row (to­day). Law doesn’t work like this. Whole night we have been work­ing with a team of lawyers,” he said.

“Law is a se­ri­ous thing and we have reached an ad­vanced stage with this be­cause the Gov­ern­ment has giv­en the con­trac­tors sev­en days by which to come and give up what­ev­er equip­ment they have to give them. So, if there is a need to file an in­junc­tion based on the le­gal opin­ion, we have to do so by Mon­day. This is a se­ri­ous thing. It is not a game.”

He en­cour­aged the con­trac­tors to Beck­les’ clin­ic “be­cause we are one PNM fam­i­ly.”

One ter­mi­nat­ed CEPEP con­trac­tor, who spoke un­der con­di­tion of anonymi­ty yes­ter­day, con­firmed he was among the many af­fect­ed.

The south res­i­dent, who has held a CPEP con­tract since April 2018, de­scribed the ter­mi­na­tions as “sud­den and un­found­ed.”

“This is a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball be­cause right now. I could firm­ly say on be­half of my com­pa­ny, I ful­fil all my con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments, all my statu­to­ry oblig­a­tions like VAT, NIS, Green Fund Levy, every­thing up to mark. So, I don’t see the rea­son for the ter­mi­na­tion.”

Ac­cord­ing to the con­trac­tor, 35 in­di­vid­u­als un­der his em­ploy­ment, in­clud­ing dri­vers, ma­chine re­pair work­ers and ad­min­is­tra­tive staff, are now out of work.

He al­so chal­lenged Gov­ern­ment nar­ra­tives about con­trac­tors prof­it­ing ex­ces­sive­ly.

“I see that the min­is­ter talk­ing all kind of $50,000, all kind of stu­pid­ness. When you re­al­ly check out all what go on, the con­trac­tor does get rough­ly about $20,000 a month for man­age­ment fee, which in­cludes...you have to or­gan­ise an of­fice, you have to have a sec­re­tary, you have to have a van to car­ry your tools, you have to have your op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es, which is you have to take care of your ma­chines, you have to buy gas, you have to do every­thing. And af­ter all them ex­pens­es, some­times you end up with a lit­tle $8,000, $9,000 based on how your ex­pens­es go.”

He said all con­trac­tors, re­gard­less of their in­di­vid­ual cir­cum­stances, have been ter­mi­nat­ed, sug­gest­ing a blan­ket purge.

The con­trac­tor al­so con­demned the Gov­ern­ment for its slo­gan “when UNC wins, every­body wins,” as he now be­lieves it does not ap­ply to every­one.

“So, tech­ni­cal­ly, all of us now la­belled as PNM con­trac­tors. No­body was spared.”

Mean­while, for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert took to X not­ing that from 2015 to 2018, CEPEP con­trac­tors hired un­der the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion were re­tained by the in­com­ing PNM gov­ern­ment, with no mass dis­missals. He said this is un­like the “heart­less, in­hu­mane, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, dic­ta­to­r­i­al, and tyran­ni­cal ac­tions” of the cur­rent UNC-led ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Ef­forts to con­tact CEPEP CEO Kei­th Ed­dy were un­suc­cess­ful.