Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

For­mer rur­al de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi yes­ter­day chal­lenged the Gov­ern­ment’s stance on the dis­missal of Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) con­trac­tors and work­ers.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the Mid-year Bud­get Re­view de­bate in Sen­ate, the Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor said un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) CEPEP was bet­ter man­aged.

He al­so took aim at Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste, over his claim that un­der the PNM some 7,000 work­ers were fired. Al-Rawi claimed while that may be so, the UNC had fired al­most twice that in just sev­en weeks in of­fice.

He said apart from 10,700 CEPEP work­ers, the PNM had in­for­ma­tion that 500 work­ers in WASA, ex­clud­ing 10 se­nior ex­ec­u­tives, 140 change agents in the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, some 1,600 work­ers at two re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties and 10 of­fi­cers from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice had been fired.

“That’s 12,960 peo­ple in sev­en weeks. And the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Labour has the gall to talk about 7,000 work­ers in 10 years? I there­fore find it re­mark­able that some­one who came from the labour move­ment, now the Min­is­ter of Labour him­self, didn’t have one word of as­sur­ance, not one word of as­sur­ance, for the most vul­ner­a­ble per­sons, peo­ple who earn $120 a day, $1,400 a fort­night, not one word was said of them.”

He added that he was in­formed that 4,700 forestry work­ers “are next on the chop­ping block” with an ad­di­tion­al 5,000 URP work­ers to fol­low.

Al-Rawi said un­der the PNM, CEPEP spent less than half in its last year than it did in the UNC’s last year.

“I’d like to put on the record that for the year 2024-2025, which we’re deal­ing with, the CEPEP bill was $351,452,611. But if I go un­der the UNC’s tenure, 2010-2015, what strikes me is that the bill in­volved, look at 2014-2015, $693,721,861. So, we’re look­ing at $351 mil­lion ver­sus $694 mil­lion.

“How do you se­ri­ous­ly make an ‘Aha!’ shame al­le­ga­tion of the last gov­ern­ment for spend­ing $351 mil­lion to em­ploy near­ly 11,000 peo­ple, when the UNC was spend­ing close to $700 mil­lion? Mr Pres­i­dent, it just makes ab­solute­ly no sense.”

Al-Rawi ques­tioned whether the $60 mil­lion set aside to pay 12 ad­di­tion­al CEPEP con­trac­tors will now be con­sumed in lit­i­ga­tion, ei­ther to pay le­gal fees or com­pen­sa­tion.

Gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ed to in­stall a new board of di­rec­tors for CEPEP to­day, as well as pay work­ers and con­trac­tors their Ju­ly salaries. New con­tracts are al­so ex­pect­ed to be signed soon.