KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Frus­tra­tion boiled over at the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) head­quar­ters in Ste Madeleine yes­ter­day as for­mer con­trac­tors de­mand­ed out­stand­ing pay­ments fol­low­ing their con­tro­ver­sial dis­missals more than two months ago.

Around mid­day, more than a dozen con­trac­tors gath­ered out­side the build­ing seek­ing an­swers on un­paid man­age­ment fees and one month’s pay­ment in lieu of no­tice (PI­LON). They said the PI­LON was due on Ju­ly 27, but to date, not a cent has been paid and CEPEP has giv­en no in­di­ca­tion of when they will re­ceive it.

The dis­missals have been mired in con­tro­ver­sy, with con­trac­tors ac­cus­ing CEPEP of abrupt­ly end­ing con­tracts un­der the guise of elim­i­nat­ing so-called “ghost gangs” while in­sist­ing they had le­git­i­mate crews and com­plet­ed work.

As the con­trac­tors pressed for a meet­ing, se­cu­ri­ty even­tu­al­ly locked the front door to the low­er en­trance while staff peered through win­dows. When se­cu­ri­ty di­rect­ed the group up­stairs, a re­cep­tion­ist told them man­age­ment was in a meet­ing and un­avail­able.

Phe­ria Fournil­li­er, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of GPM Trans­form­ing Spaces Co. Ltd, called on CEPEP CEO Kei­th Ed­dy—who signed their con­tracts and lat­er is­sued the ter­mi­na­tion let­ters—to come out and face them.

“I have doc­u­ments here that we signed, telling us to take out what­ev­er we owe to NIS and health sur­charge, take it out of the man­age­ment fee, and send the rest. Since Au­gust 22, my doc­u­ments have gone from com­pli­ance to fi­nance. Up to to­day, no word from fi­nance, no word from the CEO, no word from any­body, and they talk about run­ning ghosts,” Fournil­li­er said.

Fournil­li­er, who op­er­at­ed in the San­ta Rosa dis­trict un­der CEPEP from 2021 un­til June, ex­plained that she sub­mit­ted timesheets with­in days of ter­mi­na­tion. While re­ports of “ghost gangs” sur­faced in the me­dia, she dis­played signed timesheets bear­ing both her and her work­ers’ names, ap­proved by CEPEP. She said field of­fi­cers rou­tine­ly checked at­ten­dance and dai­ly work.

“I want to know where the ghost is and where my mon­ey is.” She added that con­trac­tors had al­ready earned their wages and had bills to pay, warn­ing that if she did not re­ceive her mon­ey with­in two days, she would es­ca­late her protest.

While Fournil­li­er is owed one month’s man­age­ment fee plus the PI­LON, oth­er con­trac­tors said their out­stand­ing sums were even greater.

Mar­lene Hazel, di­rec­tor of Abil­i­ty Works Com­pa­ny Ltd, said CEPEP owes her two months’ man­age­ment fees and the PI­LON. She stressed that nei­ther she nor her work­ers were “ghosts” in the pro­gramme.

“I am right here to­day. I am not go­ing back and email be­cause I have been send­ing to the CEO, Fi­nance and Le­gal. They nev­er re­spond­ed. Some­one else came out and told us to go up­stairs, and when we went up­stairs, the re­cep­tion­ist told us they are not deal­ing with it up­stairs, but she said, ‘Hold on.’ Then she said they are in a meet­ing that would take long and she would let them call us,” Hazel re­count­ed.

Hazel said the sit­u­a­tion feels like “games” are be­ing played, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath had pub­licly stat­ed that con­trac­tors would re­ceive their PI­LON with­in a week of dis­missal.

Now fac­ing fi­nan­cial strain, Hazel said she is falling be­hind on her mort­gage and dai­ly ex­pens­es.

“Even to­day, the bank mes­saged me about my mort­gage, and that was the fi­nal no­tice for me to pay my mort­gage. I need my mon­ey. A lot of con­trac­tors have bills to pay,” she said.

She de­scribed the ter­mi­na­tion’s tim­ing as dev­as­tat­ing:

“It was so sud­den, no no­tice what­so­ev­er. We got an email the Fri­day that we were ter­mi­nat­ed. We could not put any­thing in place, so now I need all that is owed to us.”

Hazel added that her com­pa­ny al­so com­plet­ed projects for the Land Set­tle­ment Agency and was still await­ing those pay­ments. She said her son warned that her com­pa­ny might be black­list­ed from fu­ture gov­ern­ment con­tracts, but she in­sist­ed she would not be black­list­ed “by God.”

Ef­forts to get an­swers from CEPEP of­fi­cials proved un­suc­cess­ful, and calls to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath went unan­swered.