Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has made good on its pledge to re­sus­ci­tate its le­gal ac­tion over the Gov­ern­ment’s ter­mi­na­tion of over 300 Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) con­trac­tors.

Last Thurs­day, lawyers con­nect­ed with the Op­po­si­tion filed a law­suit and an as­so­ci­at­ed in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion hours af­ter they served the CEPEP Com­pa­ny with a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion over the ter­mi­na­tion of con­trac­tors on June 27.

How­ev­er, the ac­tion was with­drawn the fol­low­ing day af­ter CEPEP’s lawyers, led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, re­spond­ed and re­ject­ed their com­plaints over the ter­mi­na­tions.

While no rea­son for the de­ci­sion was ini­tial­ly dis­closed, it was re­port­ed­ly based on the fact that Stephen Samuel’s Con­trac­tors Lim­it­ed, un­der whose name the law­suit was filed, had been pre­vi­ous­ly struck from the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry.

Yes­ter­day, the par­ty’s le­gal team, led by Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, filed an al­most iden­ti­cal claim on be­half of East­man En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed, an­oth­er Laven­tille-based gen­er­al con­tract­ing com­pa­ny.

The law­suit and an as­so­ci­at­ed ap­pli­ca­tion for in­junc­tions to stay the ter­mi­na­tions and pre­vent CEPEP from hir­ing re­place­ment con­trac­tors pend­ing the out­come of the sub­stan­tive case came up be­fore Jus­tice Mar­garet Mo­hammed.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Jus­tice Mo­hammed set dead­lines for the fil­ing of ev­i­dence and sub­mis­sions in re­la­tion to the pre­lim­i­nary ap­pli­ca­tion. She is ex­pect­ed to con­sid­er the ap­pli­ca­tion next Fri­day.

Arou­ca/Lopinot MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les high­light­ed the new case at a PNM me­dia con­fer­ence in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

“We look for­ward to the out­come of to­day’s pro­ceed­ings and we hope to get an out­come that will be in de­fence of the 11,000 cit­i­zens who are now placed on the bread­line and do not know how they would get an in­come,” Gon­za­les said.

He al­so took is­sue with cur­rent Gov­ern­ment mem­bers gloat­ing over the out­come of the ini­tial case and for crit­i­cis­ing the PNM for of­fer­ing le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the af­fect­ed con­trac­tors and a re­port­ed 10,500 work­ers.

“These are the kind of cal­lous and ir­re­spon­si­ble state­ments that we are hear­ing from lead­ers in the Gov­ern­ment, de­scrib­ing hard-work­ing cit­i­zens as ‘ghost work­ers’ and what the PNM is do­ing is de­fend­ing ‘ghost work­ers’ and what have you. I be­lieve that is very un­for­tu­nate,” he said.

About the con­trac­tor’s case

Ac­cord­ing to the court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, East­man En­ter­prise start­ed its work with CEPEP un­der a one-year con­tract signed in Sep­tem­ber 2018.

The con­tract was re­newed for two years and then for an­oth­er year be­fore the par­ties en­tered in­to a new con­tract in Oc­to­ber 2022. The fol­low­ing year, the com­pa­ny’s con­tract was ex­tend­ed to Sep­tem­ber 2026.

On April 23, days be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion, the con­tract was mod­i­fied and ex­tend­ed to Sep­tem­ber 2029.

Dur­ing the course of the con­tract, East­man re­ceived a man­age­ment fee rang­ing from $21,999.62 to $23,947.90 per month, while its 29 em­ploy­ees were paid di­rect­ly by the State com­pa­ny.

Its lawyer Ka­reem Mar­celle, who al­so serves as Laven­tille West MP, claimed CEPEP was re­quired to im­me­di­ate­ly pay the com­pa­ny for one month’s ser­vice, as it sought to ter­mi­nate based on Clause 15 of the con­tract with­out giv­ing no­tice.

The clause al­lows CEPEP to ter­mi­nate by giv­ing 30 days’ no­tice or mak­ing a pay­ment in lieu of no­tice, if the com­pa­ny fails to meet its con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions or per­for­mance as­sess­ments con­duct­ed by CEPE of­fi­cials.

Mar­celle point­ed out that while CEPEP CEO Kei­th Ed­dy promised that pay­ment would be processed and dis­pensed when he no­ti­fied the com­pa­ny of the ter­mi­na­tion, the pay­ment should have been made to­geth­er with the ter­mi­na­tion let­ter.

“It is set­tled law that for pay­ment in lieu of no­tice to have ef­fect, the out­stand­ing sum in lieu of no­tice must be paid si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the said ser­vice of no­tice,” Mar­celle said.

Mar­celle al­so sug­gest­ed that the clause is un­fair and in breach of the Un­fair Con­tract Terms Act 1985, as it gave CEPEP too wide of a dis­cre­tion to ter­mi­nate.

Mar­celle sought to high­light the se­vere ef­fects of the ter­mi­na­tions on East­man En­ter­prise and the oth­er con­trac­tors, as well as those em­ployed by them on CEPEP’s be­half.

“The dam­age that has been done to the work­ers of the Claimant, as well as that of all the oth­er con­trac­tors (as much as 10,000 per­sons) is some­thing that can­not be eas­i­ly quan­ti­fied,” he said.

“Many of the said work­ers are sin­gle par­ents. They have young chil­dren, some of whom are ill, who they work hard for in or­der to pro­vide for them,” he added.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, PNM PRO Faris Al-Rawi sug­gest­ed more lit­i­ga­tion from oth­er con­trac­tors was forth­com­ing.

“The PNM will sup­port oth­er forms of ac­tion as may be ad­vis­able in the days ahead and will dili­gent­ly seek to de­fend against the cal­lous acts of the UNC Gov­ern­ment, who seem to have noth­ing to of­fer oth­er than con­tempt for or­di­nary and hard-work­ing peo­ple,” he said.

Speak­ing on the ter­mi­na­tions on June 29, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, un­der whose min­istry CEPEP now falls, claimed Gov­ern­ment took the ac­tion based on con­cerns over al­leged cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment.