JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, August 18, 2025

Back to court: PNM files new legal action for fired CEPEP contractor

by

39 days ago
20250710
CEPEP Senior Operations Manager Shivanand Balkaran speaks to protesting workers demanding answers about their dismissals last Wednesday.

CEPEP Senior Operations Manager Shivanand Balkaran speaks to protesting workers demanding answers about their dismissals last Wednesday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

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.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored