NATUC urges Govt to absorb CEPEP workers pending reform exercise

The Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) is stand­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with over 10,500 ter­mi­nat­ed Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) work­ers. Fur­ther­more, it is call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to ab­sorb the work­ers in­to the ex­ist­ing con­trac­tu­al frame­work of the com­pa­ny un­til it re­solves is­sues it has high­light­ed.

This fol­lows wide­spread fear and un­cer­tain­ty ex­pressed by af­fect­ed work­ers yes­ter­day, af­ter they re­port­ed to work and were fi­nal­ly told by the ter­mi­nat­ed con­trac­tors that they no longer had jobs. The con­trac­tors re­ceived their ter­mi­na­tion let­ters on Fri­day but the ma­jor­i­ty of them on­ly of­fi­cial­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed what this meant to work­ers yes­ter­day.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, while NATUC gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette ac­knowl­edged Gov­ern­ment’s con­cerns about poor gov­er­nance in the pro­gramme un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, he said work­ers should not be pun­ished for the al­leged mis­con­duct of po­lit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed con­trac­tors.

“... We state em­phat­i­cal­ly: work­ers must not be made to bear the eco­nom­ic bur­den for the mis­con­duct or fail­ings of con­trac­tors. CEPEP work­ers have long toiled un­der dif­fi­cult con­di­tions, of­ten with lit­tle job se­cu­ri­ty, and it is whol­ly un­just for them to be col­lat­er­al dam­age in the pur­suit of ac­count­abil­i­ty,” An­nisette said.

The union said it sup­ports a more trans­par­ent and skill-build­ing ver­sion of CEPEP but urged Gov­ern­ment to act with ur­gency and com­pas­sion in the mat­ter.

“We there­fore call on the Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly ab­sorb the af­fect­ed work­ers in­to the ex­ist­ing con­trac­tu­al frame­work while con­tin­u­ing its le­git­i­mate in­ves­ti­ga­tions and re­forms. We urge the au­thor­i­ties to act with ur­gency and com­pas­sion, en­sur­ing that no work­er is left be­hind due to ac­tions be­yond their con­trol.”

Adding that the union un­der­stood the grav­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion and the im­pact of the de­ci­sion on the lives and liveli­hoods of the work­ers and their fam­i­lies, An­nisette said, “Our mes­sage to the CEPEP work­ers to­day is clear: you are not alone. We hear you, we sup­port you, and we will con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate for your fair treat­ment, dig­ni­ty, and se­cu­ri­ty.”

They al­so drew at­ten­tion to what it called past in­jus­tices that re­main un­ad­dressed, in­clud­ing the 2017 dis­missal of Port Au­thor­i­ty CEO Char­maine Lewis and the Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led gov­ern­ment’s re­fusal to ho­n­our a 12 per cent col­lec­tive agree­ment at the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T.