Cur­tis Williams

Lead Ed­i­tor Busi­ness

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

State-owned Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed has re­newed con­tracts “across the board” for em­ploy­ees be­cause of the COVID 19 pan­dem­ic.

On Sep­tem­ber 14 the com­pa­ny, through its lawyers Hove and As­so­ciates, re­spond­ed to sev­er­al ques­tions posed by Guardian Me­dia about the re­new­al of con­tracts, just be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tions, for CEPEP work­ers .

The com­pa­ny said: “The CEPEP Com­pa­ny took a de­ci­sion to amend con­tracts in the in­ter­est of busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity and in light of the COVID 19 pan­dem­ic . . . con­tracts were re­newed “across the board”

This is at vari­ance with the in­for­ma­tion which shows that on­ly cer­tain peo­ple had their con­tracts amend­ed, among them Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Kei­th Ed­dy.

In the days lead­ing up to the Au­gust 10 gen­er­al elec­tion, there was a scram­ble at CEPEP to sign the con­tracts of sev­er­al em­ploy­ees to en­sure they would have jobs at the com­pa­ny un­til at least 2023. If the gov­ern­ment had changed and want­ed to get rid of them, they would have been sad­dled with em­ploy­ees who had at least three years left on their con­tracts.

A Sun­day Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tion shows a pat­tern of not just re­new­al of con­tracts but changes in con­tracts that led to some peo­ple whose tenure would have end­ed next year get­ting ex­ten­sions to 2023 and oth­ers that end­ed in 2022 be­ing ex­tend­ed to 2023.

All of these con­tracts were signed days be­fore the elec­tion by Ed­dy who was him­self the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of two con­tract changes. In Ed­dy’s case, it was a change in des­ig­na­tion from Gen­er­al Man­ag­er to Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer and an in­crease in his salary of more than $20,000.

For some of the more ju­nior staff, it was an ad­di­tion of at least a year to their con­tracts and in one case a change in the terms of their con­tract, with CEPEP pro­vid­ing a com­pa­ny car and a tele­phone for an em­ploy­ee in lieu of a trav­el­ling and tele­phone al­lowance.

Last Sat­ur­day CEPEP went to court seek­ing to block the fur­ther pub­li­ca­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions and got an in­ter­im or­der pre­vent­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of this and oth­er sto­ries. On Thurs­day Jus­tice Kevin Ram­cha­ran re­moved the in­junc­tion as it per­tains to the pub­li­ca­tion of the sto­ries say­ing it was, pri­ma fa­cie in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

Ed­dy and Gopauls­ingh, in their re­spec­tive af­fi­davits filed in the High Court, de­ny all al­le­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing.

CEPEP was asked the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

Are four-year and five-year con­tracts the norm in CEPEPE

It said: “There are in­stances of four-year con­tracts and we are not aware of any five-year con­tracts.”

The com­pa­ny was al­so asked: Did it have any­thing to do with the im­pend­ing gen­er­al elec­tion?

CEPEP through its lawyers re­spond­ed by say­ing: “In keep­ing with your in­tent to find a scan­dal with­in the CEPEP Com­pa­ny un­for­tu­nate­ly for you, the con­tracts had noth­ing to do with the im­pend­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

“Please note that ow­ing to these present High Court pro­ceed­ings and the Claims filed against the Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed and your­self, in par­tic­u­lar defama­tion, mis­use of pri­vate in­for­ma­tion

and un­law­ful means con­spir­a­cy, cou­pled with the fact that our client has made a for­mal com­plaint to the po­lice con­cern­ing the un­law­ful con­spir­a­cy, we have in­struct­ed our clients to not

re­spond to any fur­ther ques­tions from your me­dia house and/or its ser­vants or agents pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of these mat­ters. “

Guardian Me­dia has copies of all the con­tracts in ques­tion, in­clud­ing Ed­dy’s and can al­so say that while CEPEP may not be aware of any claim of any­one be­ing giv­en a five-year con­tract we have in our pos­ses­sion at least one such con­tract.

On De­cem­ber 2, 2019, Ed­dy had his con­tract amend­ed to change his des­ig­na­tion from Gen­er­al Man­ag­er to CEO. This change of con­tract came four days af­ter a mem­o­ran­dum was sent to the Se­nior Hu­man Re­source Of­fi­cer from Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary Nicole Gopauls­ingh, un­der the cap­tion Ap­proval of Amend­ed Job de­scrip­tion and com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages—Gen­er­al Man­ag­er/CEO and Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary/Head Le­gal, ad­vis­ing that the board chaired by Mar­i­lyn Michael had re­solved to change Ed­dy’s po­si­tion and to sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease her salary and Ed­dy’s.

On Ju­ly 10 Ed­dy’s con­tract was again amend­ed. This time he was giv­en an ad­di­tion­al year mov­ing the end of con­tract date from June 10, 2022, to June 10, 2023, length­en­ing his con­tract­ed pe­ri­od from three to four years. The amend­ed con­tract cov­ers a re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age of $65,000 a month, up from just over $42,000 a month.

A month af­ter that con­tract was signed, $135,000 was de­posit­ed in Ed­dy’s ac­count by CEPEP re­flect­ing the retroac­tive salary to De­cem­ber 2019, mi­nus the tax­es but the Chair­man of CEPEP has said that was an ac­count­ing er­ror.

In a press re­lease on Sep­tem­ber 8, chair­man Mar­i­lyn Michael claimed an ac­count­ing er­ror led to the pay­ment of al­most a quar­ter-mil­lion dol­lars to Ed­dy and Gopauls­ingh on Au­gust 14.

Michael said the er­ror was recog­nised on Au­gust 19 and sub­se­quent­ly cor­rect­ed on Sep­tem­ber 1.

The pay­ments of $135,000 to Ed­dy and $92,935.31 to Gopauls­ingh were made to their ac­counts four days af­ter the Au­gust 10 gen­er­al elec­tion, Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed on Sep­tem­ber 6.

Guardian Me­dia has copies of the trans­ac­tions and the fig­ures rep­re­sent ma­jor in­creas­es in salaries for the two that were ap­proved by the CEPEP board in 2019 but on­ly paid in Au­gust.

The records show that Ed­dy was paid $180,000, rep­re­sent­ing in­cre­ments of $21,500 per month for eight months of in­creased base salary and $8,000 for the eight months of in­creased en­ter­tain­ment al­lowance. How­ev­er, when 25 per cent in tax­es were de­duct­ed, the sum of $135,000 was for­ward­ed to his bank ac­count. Sim­i­lar­ly, Gopauls­ingh re­ceived eight months of in­cre­ments and in­creased al­lowances mi­nus tax­es that worked out to $92,935.31. How­ev­er, the CEPEP press re­lease in­sists that the pay­ments were sub­se­quent­ly re­versed.

In a sworn af­fi­davit Michael said: “I wish to state that al­though the salary in­creas­es were ap­proved by the Board of Di­rec­tors they have not ben­e­fit­ed from same as we are await­ing an opin­ion from learned se­nior coun­sel re­gard­ing whether or not fur­ther ap­proval is re­quired by Cab­i­net.”

This ap­pears to be dif­fer­ent from CEPEP’s press re­lease which claimed the com­pa­ny was await­ing word from the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer and the Cab­i­net HR com­mit­tee be­fore pay­ing the ap­proved salaries to Ed­dy or Gopauls­ingh.

For­mer CEPEPchair­man Ash­ton Ford had raised con­cerns about the hir­ing and fir­ing process at the com­pa­ny ear­ly last year. In board min­utes which Guardian Me­dia has copies of, Ford said: “As Chair­man of the Board I have not been giv­en ac­cess to the con­tracts of the en­gaged per­son­nel, es­pe­cial­ly, the ap­point­ed Heads of De­part­ment. The Board has on­ly been in­formed of these ap­point­ments through copies of mem­o­ran­da is­sued by the Se­nior Hu­man Re­source Of­fi­cer and ad­dressed to the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, which are then passed on­to the Hu­man Re­source Com­mit­tee of the Board.”

He in­sist­ed: “I am com­pelled to sub­mit this state­ment be­cause of in­for­ma­tion reach­ing me that cer­tain man­age­ment de­ci­sions may re­sult in lit­i­ga­tion against the CEPEP Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.”

Ford’s con­cerns were con­veyed in a doc­u­ment he sent to the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance on Oc­to­ber 29, 2019, in which he de­tailed rea­sons for his res­ig­na­tion from the Board of Di­rec­tors. Among the rea­sons he gave were how se­nior staff is hired, a lack of recog­ni­tion by the man­age­ment of the au­thor­i­ty of the board and its re­la­tion­ship with the man­age­ment and in­ter­fer­ence from the line Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein.

Ho­sein has re­peat­ed­ly de­nied that he has been in­ter­fer­ing in the op­er­a­tions of CEPEP and ac­knowl­edged that he was aware of Ford’s al­le­ga­tions but rub­bished them. He in­sist­ed that his hands are clean telling Guardian Me­dia he is a sim­ple man and would nev­er be part of any­thing close to cor­rup­tion.