Geisha Kow­lessar

The Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) and The Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Ned­co) yes­ter­day signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) which will pave the way for CEPEP em­ploy­ees to be­come en­tre­pre­neurs.

The event took place at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, and is de­signed to fa­cil­i­tate the de­vel­op­ment of mi­cro, small and medi­um en­ter­prise mar­ket and aid in the de­vel­op­ment of en­tre­pre­neur­ial ac­tiv­i­ty. Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod, who de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress, said the aim of both or­gan­i­sa­tions was to achieve the sec­ond of Gov­ern­ment's sev­en in­ter-con­nect­ed pil­lars for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

He said: "As one of Gov­ern­ment's agen­cies, which falls with­in my re­mit, Ned­co has a crit­i­cal role to play in Gov­ern­ment's cur­rent thrust for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and based on the cur­rent evo­lu­tion tak­ing place with­in the CEPEP com­pa­ny I am cer­tain their role in the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion process will be as equal­ly im­por­tant."

He added loan fi­nanc­ing was al­so a ma­jor as­pect of the MOU, adding this was a step in the right di­rec­tion. The Labour Min­is­ter said the move al­so would fa­cil­i­tate small con­trac­tors to ac­quire con­tracts of up to $1 mil­lion. He added: "This col­lab­o­ra­tion would fit square­ly in the min­istry's arrange­ment for the de­vel­op­ment of its Fair­share Pro­gramme, which will give qual­i­fy­ing mi­cro and small en­ter­pris­es and co-op­er­a­tives ac­cess to Gov­ern­ment's con­tracts to a lim­it of $1 mil­lion in var­i­ous en­deav­ours.

"The link with CEPEP will raise the num­ber of mi­cro, small en­ter­pris­es which will qual­i­fy for the Fair­share Pro­gramme." Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who al­so spoke, said no longer must CEPEP work­ers be viewed as just cut­ting grass at the side of the road and paint­ing stones.

He said his min­istry al­so was seek­ing to part­ner with oth­er stake­hold­ers to achieve a more sus­tain­able coun­try. In an ef­fort to rev­o­lu­tionise CEPEP, Mooni­lal said the or­gan­i­sa­tion soon would be a sig­na­to­ry to the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion's four ma­jor strate­gic ob­jec­tives which in­clude job cre­ation, skill de­vel­op­ment and sus­tain­able liveli­hood.