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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

160-175 con­trac­tors to go–CEPEP boss

Workers Safe

by

20160825

Be­tween 160 and 175 of the 265 con­trac­tors em­ployed with the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) will be axed from the pro­gramme for now, but the 12,000-odd em­ploy­ees cur­rent­ly en­gaged will stay.

In fact, once the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion to CEPEP was main­tained in the next fis­cal year, the num­ber of em­ploy­ees was like­ly to rise and the new set of con­trac­tors would be "com­mu­ni­ty per­sons" from con­stituen­cies all over T&T, chair­man Trevor Lynch said yes­ter­day.

"The CEPEP com­pa­ny wish­es to here­by state for the pur­pose of clar­i­fi­ca­tion that the change out of con­trac­tors un­der the cur­rent re­struc­tur­ing of the pro­gramme will not af­fect the 12,000-odd em­ploy­ees cur­rent­ly en­gaged with the pro­gramme," Lynch said in re­sponse to ques­tions from the T&T Guardian.

"Once the sub­ven­tions are main­tained in the next fi­nan­cial year, the CEPEP em­ploy­ment fig­ure is like­ly to rise as the com­pa­ny in­creas­es ef­fi­cien­cies and re­duces wastage," he added.

As for the con­trac­tors, he said: "There are 265 con­trac­tors now. We wouldn't change all yet, just be­tween 160 to 175. We don't know what the next bud­get will be like. This is in case there is a re­duc­tion in sub­ven­tion."

Lynch's "re­vised state­ment" giv­ing as­sur­ance that none of the 12,000-odd em­ploy­ees will lose their jobs came one day af­ter CEPEP put out a two-page me­dia state­ment in the dai­ly news­pa­pers to cor­rect "gross­ly in­ac­cu­rate" state­ments made by for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, on the com­pa­ny's re­struc­tur­ing plan.

In the state­ment, the com­pa­ny in­di­cat­ed that 90 per cent of the con­trac­tors who were em­ployed with the pro­gramme for more than five years would not have their con­tracts re­newed. The state­ment re­sult­ed in some con­fu­sion among CEPEP labour­ers who feared they would al­so lose their jobs.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Lynch said: "We are re­al­ly ad­just­ing the con­trac­tors who have been with the com­pa­ny for over five years. Not the em­ploy­ees, most of them will be re­tained."

Screen­ing process

Putting to rest no­tions that the re­struc­tur­ing was an un­der­cov­er plot to re­hire friends and as­so­ciates, Lynch said in or­der to avoid that very thing the com­pa­ny had placed ads in the news­pa­pers since De­cem­ber last year ask­ing con­trac­tors to ap­ply.

"We got 3,000 ap­pli­ca­tions but we have been screen­ing them," he said.

Out­lin­ing the se­lec­tion cri­te­ria, he said the com­pa­ny had a plan to cov­er all the con­stituen­cies.

"We want the con­trac­tors to be from the con­stituen­cies and they must be com­mu­ni­ty per­sons, not like big peo­ple," he added.

He said some pre­vi­ous con­trac­tors were big busi­ness peo­ple.

In its news­pa­per me­dia state­ment, CEPEP said each of the ex­ist­ing con­trac­tors who were em­ployed for over five years had six teams com­pris­ing ten work­ers a team and earned $3,500,000.

It said most of those con­trac­tors had their con­tracts re­newed in the weeks pre­ced­ing last year's gen­er­al elec­tion even though the for­mer board and man­age­ment knew they were not pay­ing health sur­charge, na­tion­al in­sur­ance, Val­ue Added Tax and the Green Fund Levy to the State on be­half of their em­ploy­ees.

CEPEP al­so point­ed out that work­ers were paid by the com­pa­ny and not the con­trac­tors.


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