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Sunday, July 27, 2025

CEPEP lawyers: Contracts not approved by Cabinet; file goes to cops

by

11 days ago
20250716

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme Com­pa­ny (CEPEP) has claimed that its for­mer board was de­ceived in­to con­tro­ver­sial­ly re­new­ing the con­tracts of over 300 con­trac­tors days be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion on April 28. The com­pa­ny said the re­newals were based on a fraud­u­lent mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion that the ac­tion was ap­proved by the then-Cab­i­net. 

The State com­pa­ny’s le­gal team, led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, made the ma­jor ac­cu­sa­tion on Mon­day in an ap­pli­ca­tion to strike out a law­suit brought by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) on be­half of Laven­tille-based gen­er­al con­tract­ing com­pa­ny East­man En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed. 

The ap­pli­ca­tion is ex­pect­ed to be raised on Fri­day when High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed con­sid­ers a sep­a­rate in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion from the Op­po­si­tion PNM to stay the re­cent de­ci­sion of the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment to ter­mi­nate the con­tracts and block the pos­si­ble ap­point­ment of re­place­ment con­trac­tors. 

In the strik­ing-out ap­pli­ca­tion, CEPEP’s lawyer Jared Ja­groo claimed that the dis­crep­an­cy over Cab­i­net ap­proval was dis­cov­ered while his client was seek­ing to re­spond to East­man’s case, which was filed last week af­ter an­oth­er case from an­oth­er af­fect­ed con­trac­tor was with­drawn. 

At­tached to the ap­pli­ca­tion were af­fi­davits from CEPEP’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Kei­th Ed­dy, its head of le­gal/cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Nicole Gopauls­ingh, and Neela Ram-At­wa­roo, the act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties. 

In his af­fi­davit, Ed­dy claimed that in March, for­mer CEPEP chair­man Joel Ed­wards told him Cab­i­net had ap­proved ex­tend­ing the con­tracts—orig­i­nal­ly set to ex­pire in 2026—un­til 2029.

He claimed that based on Ed­wards’ rep­re­sen­ta­tion, a rat­i­fi­ca­tion note was pre­pared and sent via email to the board mem­bers for “round-robin” ap­proval, which they sub­se­quent­ly grant­ed. 

Ed­dy claimed that while he had con­cerns over the di­rec­tive, he be­lieved that it was ap­proved by the Cab­i­net led by for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young. 

“I con­sid­er that CEPEP was du­ty-bound to im­ple­ment the de­ci­sion of the Cab­i­net be­cause it re­flect­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy and was there­fore the ex­press will of the share­hold­er,” he said. 

Gopauls­ingh con­firmed Ed­dy’s claims over the re­newals in her af­fi­davit. 

Ram-At­wa­roo, whose min­istry re­placed the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment as CEPEP’s line min­istry with the change of gov­ern­ment, de­tails the steps she took to ver­i­fy whether there was, in fact, Cab­i­net ap­proval.

“De­spite thor­ough and dili­gent search­es, the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment was un­able to find any record of such a Cab­i­net Note,” she said. 

She al­so stat­ed that she sought fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the Sec­re­tary of Cab­i­net, who con­firmed that there was no Cab­i­net note or minute in which the re­newals were ap­proved. 

Stat­ing that the lack of doc­u­men­ta­tion showed that there was no Cab­i­net ap­proval, Ram-At­wa­roo said, “This is im­por­tant be­cause Cab­i­net would have need­ed to ap­prove these ex­ten­sions, as the ex­ten­sions would ne­ces­si­tate al­lo­ca­tion of fund­ing for the next four years out of the year­ly bud­get for these con­trac­tors.” 

She al­so stat­ed that the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Fi­nance had con­firmed to her that the Cab­i­net ap­proval was re­quired for the ex­ten­sions.  

Ja­groo stat­ed that the com­pa­ny would be re­port­ing what it un­cov­ered to the Fraud Squad and the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to de­ter­mine whether such could re­sult in charges for fraud and mis­con­duct in pub­lic of­fice. 

“The CEPEP Board was clear­ly labour­ing un­der a se­ri­ous mis­ap­pre­hen­sion as a re­sult of this fraud­u­lent mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion and ex­tend­ed the con­tracts on the false premise that it was im­ple­ment­ing and ex­e­cut­ing a Cab­i­net de­ci­sion,” Ja­groo said. 

“In the premis­es, the court has no ju­ris­dic­tion or should not ex­er­cise any ju­ris­dic­tion which it may have in this mat­ter,” he added. 

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Ed­wards to re­spond to Ed­dy and Gopauls­ingh’s claims over his al­leged as­sur­ance of Cab­i­net ap­proval. 

Ed­wards de­clined to com­ment on whether he gave the as­sur­ance or whether for­mer Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and cur­rent Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi had in­di­cat­ed such to him. 

“I would not re­spond be­cause I have been ad­vised not to speak on this mat­ter since it is a mat­ter be­fore the courts,” Ed­wards said. 

Al-Rawi al­so re­fused to com­ment on the is­sue when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day. 

In ad­di­tion to the ap­proval is­sue, Ja­groo al­so stat­ed that East­man’s case should be re­ject­ed by the court with­out a tri­al, as its con­tract with CEPEP con­tained a clause di­rect­ing the par­ties to en­gage in me­di­a­tion and ar­bi­tra­tion to re­solve dis­putes be­tween them, such as the ter­mi­na­tion. 

“As a pre­con­di­tion to bring­ing this claim, the par­ties have agreed to first ex­er­cise and/or ex­haust these two al­ter­na­tive dis­pute res­o­lu­tion mech­a­nisms be­fore a vi­able and jus­ti­cia­ble claim could be brought in the High Court,” Ja­groo said. 

“It would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate and im­prop­er for the court to al­low the claimant to breach and/or by­pass the manda­to­ry al­ter­na­tive dis­pute res­o­lu­tion mech­a­nisms they agreed to and en­ter­tain this claim.”

In the sub­stan­tive case, East­man is con­tend­ing that CEPEP act­ed un­law­ful­ly in ter­mi­nat­ing the con­tracts based on a di­rec­tive from the cur­rent Cab­i­net led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. 

It claims that CEPEP was re­quired to im­me­di­ate­ly pay it 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 CEPEP of­fi­cials. 

It al­leged that while it was promised that the pay­ment would be processed and dis­pensed when CEPEP no­ti­fied the com­pa­ny of the ter­mi­na­tion, the pay­ment should have been made to­geth­er with the ter­mi­na­tion let­ter. 

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

East­man is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, Ka­reem Mar­celle, and St Clair O’Neil.

     


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