The Sun­day Guardian’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) points to two ma­jor con­cerns and missed op­por­tu­ni­ties for mak­ing pro­duc­tive bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions. One, there is the in­ex­cus­able fail­ure of fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty by the gov­ern­ments of the pe­ri­od 2009-2023, when both the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)-led Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship and the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) had re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Trea­sury.

It’s an in­dict­ment on both gov­ern­ments for the spend­ing of bil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars with­out en­sur­ing prop­er ac­count­ing and au­dit­ing pro­ce­dures were fol­lowed in the so­cial pro­gramme. This was par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal in a com­pa­ny such as CEPEP, which has been the sub­ject of on­go­ing al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and in­ad­e­quate per­for­mance.

What makes the rev­e­la­tions of the Sun­day Guardian in­ves­tiga­tive re­port com­plete­ly un­ten­able is how such prac­tices were pro­ceed­ed with an­nu­al­ly with­out no­tice and any vi­tal ac­tion tak­en. Rather, the mal­prac­tice was ig­nored, with gov­ern­ments still an­nu­al­ly re­turn­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions to the com­pa­nies in­volved.

The sec­ond ma­jor fall­out of the re­port­ed $6.5 bil­lion in un­ac­count­ed for spend­ing over the 14-year pe­ri­od is that the al­lo­ca­tions and re­leas­es con­tin­ued with­out ques­tion. More­over, it is cer­tain that a large chunk of the to­tal spend­ing on the projects, which ac­com­plished a mar­gin of use­ful work for the cit­i­zens, could not have been in­ves­ti­gat­ed and pros­e­cut­ed.

It must sure­ly come to the mind of all those think­ing con­struc­tive­ly that such an an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tion spent with­out any au­dits could have been in­vest­ed in ef­fec­tive train­ing pro­grammes and projects de­signed to con­tribute to the GDP of the coun­try and to teach­ing skills to those in the pro­gramme.

Now, it can be ar­gued that the ma­jor­i­ty of the peo­ple hired un­der the pro­gramme are dropouts of the so­ci­ety and econ­o­my, large num­bers of them not hav­ing been able to gain the kind of ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing that can make them eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able in the open econ­o­my. In these cir­cum­stances, the so­ci­ety has to take on a ma­jor part of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to al­low them to earn a liv­ing, which can re­turn great ben­e­fits to them and the coun­try.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly for so­ci­ety and the poli­ty, the chances must now be slim for a suc­cess­ful in­ves­ti­ga­tion and com­pre­hen­sive au­dit­ing of the 14 years of ex­pen­di­ture to take place.

What has been learnt by the rev­e­la­tions of the Sun­day Guardian re­port is the fact that, notwith­stand­ing high-sound­ing de­c­la­ra­tions and ac­cu­sa­tions from the par­ties which have been in gov­ern­ment, it’s the “same kha­ki pants.” In­deed, both the PNM and UNC gov­ern­ments have been re­spon­si­ble for the un­ac­count­ed-for and most like­ly il­le­gal ex­pen­di­ture of un­known hun­dreds of mil­lions of tax­pay­er dol­lars.

For the fu­ture then, start­ing with the 2026 bud­get, be­fore one cent can be al­lo­cat­ed to CEPEP, the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment must first iden­ti­fy new and pro­duc­tive pro­gram­ming which can be ben­e­fi­cial to the coun­try for the an­nu­al hun­dreds of mil­lions al­lo­cat­ed.

Sec­ond­ly, the Gov­ern­ment must demon­strate to the na­tion that it has put in place a sys­tem of ex­pen­di­ture and ac­count­ing which en­sures the prop­er au­dit­ing of the spend­ing.