Patriotic Front calls for compassion from Govt over CEPEP dismissals

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The Pa­tri­ot­ic Front has voiced strong sup­port for the re­cent­ly passed Prime Min­is­ter’s Pen­sion Amend­ment Bill but is not hap­py with thou­sands of CEPEP work­ers be­ing placed on the bread­line.

The par­ty, head­ed by Mick­ela Pan­day, sharply crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for what it calls the ne­glect and mis­treat­ment of thou­sands of pub­lic sec­tor and CEPEP work­ers.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the par­ty praised Par­lia­ment’s swift ac­tion in re­form­ing pen­sion arrange­ments for prime min­is­ters, call­ing it a nec­es­sary step to­wards end­ing what the par­ty de­scribes as “ex­ces­sive ben­e­fits and gold­en hand­shakes.”

But the par­ty said the move rings hol­low in light of out­stand­ing wage in­creas­es and back pay owed to pub­lic ser­vants.

The Pa­tri­ot­ic Front al­so con­demned the re­cent dis­missal of 10,500 Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) work­ers, many of whom were re­port­ed­ly fired with­out no­tice. The state­ment ex­pressed con­cern over the sud­den job loss­es, warn­ing of se­ri­ous con­se­quences for the af­fect­ed work­ers and their fam­i­lies.

“The Gov­ern­ment could have au­dit­ed the ex­ist­ing arrange­ments with­out abrupt ter­mi­na­tion, throw­ing fam­i­lies in­to fear and con­fu­sion,” the par­ty said.

Crit­i­cism was al­so di­rect­ed at La Brea MP Clyde El­der, a for­mer union leader and now a Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, who re­port­ed­ly re­ferred to the dis­missed CEPEP work­ers as “col­lat­er­al dam­age.”

The Pa­tri­ot­ic Front called the com­ment “heart­less” and de­mand­ed more com­pas­sion from the Gov­ern­ment.

“Ba­sic log­ic will tell you, if CEPEP con­tracts with con­trac­tors who hire the work­ers when these con­tracts end with on­ly one month’s pay, work­ers are left un­pro­tect­ed,” the par­ty stat­ed. “Con­trac­tors pay­ing them for Ju­ly while they are not work­ing would be up to good­will, which is high­ly un­like­ly.”

The Pa­tri­ot­ic Front urged the Gov­ern­ment to move swift­ly to ad­dress the work­ers’ griev­ances, pro­vide owed wages, and en­sure fair treat­ment go­ing for­ward. It al­so called for full trans­paren­cy in the CEPEP con­tract­ing and hir­ing process fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of on­go­ing au­dits.