Padarath: Fired CEPEP workers to get one month’s pay

An es­ti­mat­ed 10,500 peo­ple who were fired from Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) will be re­ceiv­ing mon­ey soon.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has con­firmed that over 300 con­trac­tors ter­mi­nat­ed from the pro­gramme last Fri­day, who were col­lec­tive­ly re­spon­si­ble for the 10,000-plus work­ers, will re­ceive one month’s pay­ment “in lieu of no­tice,” en­abling them to com­pen­sate their work­ers for the month of Ju­ly.

“They are not just go­ing home with­out any­thing; CEPEP con­trac­tors will be paid and are ex­pect­ed to pay their em­ploy­ees,” Padarath told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns over the sud­den move, Padarath em­pha­sised that Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion was not aimed at leav­ing work­ers with­out in­come or sup­port. He said in ad­di­tion to the pay­ment, work­ers can ac­cess as­sis­tance from the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, which has been placed on stand­by if need­ed.

He said the com­pen­sa­tion clause was part of the orig­i­nal con­tract and was de­lib­er­ate­ly trig­gered to en­sure em­ploy­ees un­der the out­go­ing con­trac­tors will still be paid dur­ing the tran­si­tion pe­ri­od.

“In the in­ter­im, what will hap­pen is that they will re­ceive that one month in lieu of no­tice, so it is not just a slap­dash mea­sure that we just cut peo­ple and send them home. We have in­voked that clause; there­fore, con­trac­tors will be paid and are ex­pect­ed to do the right thing by their em­ploy­ees as well,” Padarath said.

Last Fri­day, hun­dreds of CEPEP con­tracts were ter­mi­nat­ed af­ter the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced plans for a full au­dit of com­pa­ny’s as­sets, con­tracts, and op­er­a­tions on June 5 dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.

Au­dits had not been con­duct­ed since 2020, and the Gov­ern­ment claimed more than 360 CEPEP con­tracts were signed on the eve of the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

On Mon­day, sev­er­al for­mer work­ers ex­plained how the sud­den ter­mi­na­tion would af­fect them fi­nan­cial­ly. They ad­mit­ted they were scared and con­fused.

Padarath yes­ter­day in­sist­ed that mea­sures were be­ing tak­en to mit­i­gate the fall­out from the move.

“There is an­oth­er area, which is so­cial sup­port. The Min­istry of Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices are en­gaged. We are not work­ing in si­los. We are work­ing in tan­dem with each oth­er and, there­fore, a lot of the sup­port that may be need­ed is di­rect­ed through the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment. How­ev­er, as in­di­cat­ed in lieu of the no­tice, con­trac­tors will be paid and they will have to pay their em­ploy­ees.”

Asked whether the funds were al­ready dis­bursed to the for­mer con­trac­tors, Padarath said the funds were ex­pect­ed to be made ac­ces­si­ble this week.

“You would re­call that we just did the mid-year re­view and there was an ap­pli­ca­tion for just over $60 mil­lion and that is be­fore the Sen­ate, and there­fore, once it is passed in both Hous­es, then the dis­burse­ment will be car­ried out. So, over the next few days, I an­tic­i­pate that will hap­pen.”

Padarath said the au­dit in­to the pro­gramme was still on­go­ing.

“We have re­ceived some in­for­ma­tion based on in­ter­nal doc­u­ments but there are some ar­eas that are still out­stand­ing. So, I am hop­ing that over the next month or two that that ex­er­cise should be com­plet­ed.”

Padarath had pre­vi­ous­ly ac­cused the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of pros­ti­tut­ing CEPEP and us­ing the pro­gramme as a slush fund to ben­e­fit se­nior par­ty of­fi­cials.

Padarath al­so an­nounced that a new CEPEP board will be in­stalled to­day. He said the new board’s im­me­di­ate man­date will be to be­gin the process of reg­is­ter­ing new con­trac­tors un­der up­dat­ed stip­u­la­tions aimed at im­prov­ing trans­paren­cy, ef­fi­cien­cy, and de­liv­ery of ser­vice across com­mu­ni­ties.

“We are look­ing to cut out that wastage, mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion that oc­curred in CEPEP dur­ing the PNM’s ad­min­is­tra­tion and, there­fore, we en­vis­age a more trans­par­ent process. But we are putting a stip­u­la­tion on con­trac­tors that you have to op­er­ate out of the com­mu­ni­ties from which your com­pa­ny is based and the con­trac­tors are ex­pect­ed to hire per­sons from with­in the com­mu­ni­ty from which the busi­ness is reg­is­tered.”

He said fol­low­ing the stream­lin­ing of the process, prospec­tive con­trac­tors will be in­vit­ed to ap­ply for con­tracts.