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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Cepep contractors facing termination

by

20160824

The Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep) yes­ter­day said it planned to re­move con­trac­tors who have spent more than three years in the pro­gramme. The plan will af­fect 90 per cent of its con­trac­tors who, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny, have been op­er­at­ing in the sys­tem for over five years.

The com­pa­ny made the an­nounce­ment in a me­dia state­ment pub­lished yes­ter­day, in which it not­ed the move had be­come nec­es­sary be­cause the pro­gramme had "de­vi­at­ed from the prin­ci­ples of trans­paren­cy and up­right­ness" over the years.

Up to last night, Cepep chair­man Trevor Lynch had not re­spond­ed to a call or text mes­sage query­ing how many peo­ple would be af­fect­ed, if the con­tracts would be re­viewed and how many jobs would be lost in what ap­pears a stream­lin­ing ex­er­cise.

Calls to Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties An­cil An­toine, un­der whose purview Cepep falls, al­so went unan­swered. Cepep was con­cep­tu­alised as an in­cu­ba­tor fa­cil­i­ty af­ford­ing con­trac­tors the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn and grow their busi­ness­es over a three-year pe­ri­od.

It was felt that up­on grad­u­at­ing from the pro­gramme, the con­trac­tor would be able to of­fer ser­vices and com­pete suc­cess­ful­ly in the pri­vate sec­tor with­out Gov­ern­ment sup­port.

But in its state­ment yes­ter­day, Cepep said: "Cur­rent­ly, 90 per cent of the ex­ist­ing con­trac­tors have been en­gaged by the pro­gramme for more than five years. Most of this group of con­trac­tors have six teams of ten per­sons per team and have earned in that pe­ri­od over $3,500,000 (per con­trac­tor) in man­age­ment fees."

The state­ment not­ed that some con­trac­tors had signed new con­tracts in the weeks lead­ing up to the last gen­er­al elec­tion on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2015 and in some cas­es on the day of the elec­tion.

It was al­so not­ed that con­trac­tors en­gaged in the pro­gramme were not pay­ing health sur­charge, NIS, VAT or Green Fund Levy to the State on be­half of their em­ploy­ees, as re­quired by their con­tracts with Cepep and by law.

But rather than dis­ci­pline the con­trac­tors, Cepep said the for­mer board es­tab­lished a point sys­tem to grade con­trac­tors as "com­pli­ant" or "non-com­pli­ant." It said in spite of find­ing on­ly a hand­ful of com­pli­ant con­trac­tors the board "took no ac­tion against the con­trac­tors, who mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed or em­bez­zled as much as $500,000 in some cas­es."

Cepep al­so not­ed that all con­trac­tors' em­ploy­ees were paid di­rect­ly by Cepep and not the con­trac­tors. The com­pa­ny is re­spon­si­ble for over 12,000 staff, con­trac­tors and con­trac­tors' em­ploy­ees, it said.

While Cepep as­sured that its over­all lev­el of em­ploy­ment would be main­tained, it said the in­tent of the pro­gramme was to pro­vide short-term in­come sup­port for the em­ploy­ees of the con­trac­tors while up­grad­ing their skills through train­ing. It said the com­pa­ny was cur­rent­ly in the process of re­align­ing the pro­gramme with its core ob­jec­tive as a busi­ness in­cu­ba­tor.

The com­pa­ny said staff whose jobs were made re­dun­dant un­der the emerg­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture would be screened for suit­abil­i­ty in oth­er ar­eas of the com­pa­ny and sub­ject to their ac­cep­tance, would be de­ployed to those suit­able po­si­tions.

Mooni­lal: Di­ver­sion tac­tic

In re­sponse to Cepep's state­ment, for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal, in a press re­lease, in­sist­ed that it was seek­ing to di­vert at­ten­tion from plans to dis­miss 12,000 work­ers and con­trac­tors.

Asked how many con­trac­tors award­ed con­tracts for more than five years were like­ly to be re­leased by Cepep, Mooni­lal es­ti­mat­ed the fig­ure to be 150 based on fig­ures he had. He said that fig­ure meant 10,000 em­ploy­ees could sacked.

"The stark re­al­i­ty is that the com­pa­ny is mov­ing to ter­mi­nate con­trac­tors and work­ers with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and ap­pro­pri­ate pub­lic ex­pla­na­tion.

"That dis­turb­ing and ir­refutable fact is com­pound­ed by gross­ly ir­reg­u­lar hir­ing prac­tices and sum­ma­ry re­moval of sev­er­al staff em­ploy­ees."


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