KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Cepep chair­man Joel Ed­wards has dis­missed claims that the re­new­al of hun­dreds of con­tracts in the weeks lead­ing up to the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ed­wards, who re­signed fol­low­ing the change of gov­ern­ment, said the process be­gan long be­fore for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced the elec­tion.

“It had noth­ing at all to do with the elec­tions. We did not even know that elec­tions were go­ing to be called when we ini­ti­at­ed this process, be­cause this process was ini­ti­at­ed about three months ago,” Ed­wards said.

At a post-Cab­i­net brief­ing on Thurs­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath al­leged that over 360 Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme con­tracts were re­newed days be­fore the polls with­out Cab­i­net ap­proval. He said Cepep’s man­age­ment ini­tial­ly ad­vised that ap­proval was re­quired but pro­ceed­ed with the ex­ten­sions any­way.

Padarath’s re­marks mir­rored a pre­vi­ous Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion which re­vealed that be­fore the Au­gust 10, 2020 elec­tion, Cepep re­port­ed­ly scram­bled to sign sev­er­al em­ploy­ees’ con­tracts to guar­an­tee them jobs un­til at least 2023.

CEPEP lat­er said it had amend­ed con­tracts “in the in­ter­est of busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity” and in re­sponse to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Con­cerns over hir­ing prac­tices date back to Oc­to­ber 2019, when an­oth­er for­mer Cepep chair­man raised red flags in a let­ter to then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and then fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

At the brief­ing, Padarath al­so ac­cused the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion of favour­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment con­stituen­cies and al­leged po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in con­trac­tor se­lec­tion.

An­oth­er con­cern was the rental of an un­used build­ing along the East-West Cor­ri­dor for $3.5 mil­lion over three years. Padarath said the lease has since been ter­mi­nat­ed and Cepep is un­der­go­ing an au­dit.

How­ev­er, Ed­wards said there were nev­er 360 con­trac­tors dur­ing his tenure—on­ly 329, or per­haps 335 by the time he stepped down.

“I am a stick­ler for pro­ce­dure, and we did fol­low all of the pro­ce­dures that we had: a com­pre­hen­sive per­for­mance ap­praisal was done on all the con­trac­tors.

“On the is­sue of re­newals, not all con­tracts were re­newed. Some con­tracts were re­newed, and that was re­al­ly main­ly as an is­sue of con­ti­nu­ity.”

Ed­wards said Cepep con­tin­ues to re­ceive na­tion­al praise for its role in keep­ing the coun­try clean.

Ad­dress­ing claims of con­stituen­cy bias, Ed­wards said there are Cepep con­trac­tors in all 41 con­stituen­cies, in­clud­ing sim­i­lar pro­grammes in To­ba­go un­der the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.

“They get the fund­ing from the gov­ern­ment, so the 39 that are in Trinidad and To­ba­go, there are Cepep con­trac­tors in all 39, and there is a fair dis­tri­b­u­tion of con­trac­tors based on the ex­tent of work that needs to be done.”

He said any com­par­i­son of con­stituen­cy size and con­trac­tor dis­tri­b­u­tion would show fair­ness. He al­so not­ed that he in­her­it­ed the con­trac­tor pool and was un­der strict in­struc­tion from the Min­istry of Fi­nance not to add more.

Re­gard­ing the fi­nan­cial man­age­ment and the East–West Cor­ri­dor build­ing, Ed­wards said the board took steps to im­prove fi­nan­cial over­sight.

As a char­tered ac­coun­tant, he said, one of the mea­sures car­ried out was bring­ing fi­nan­cial au­dits up to date. He ex­plained that the rental prop­er­ty was in­tend­ed to re­place Cepep’s Ste Madeleine head of­fice, which OS­HA had deemed un­safe.

For­mer Cepep di­rec­tor Dr Michael Seales al­so de­fend­ed the board, say­ing he saw no wrong­do­ing by Ed­wards.

“I am not go­ing to al­low that in any giv­en cir­cum­stances, be­cause, at the end of the day, per­sons have the rest of their lives to go on, both pro­fes­sion­al­ly and per­son­al­ly.”

Seales ex­plained the board process re­gard­ing con­trac­tor re­newals: “The board would ei­ther re­view the doc­u­ments and reg­is­ter its ob­jec­tion or non-ob­jec­tion.”

He ques­tioned the cur­rent nar­ra­tive. “It is con­fus­ing to hear what is tak­ing place and (I) nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced the Cepep board go­ing to the Cab­i­net for the ap­proval of con­trac­tors.

“The usu­al or­der of busi­ness was there is a rec­om­men­da­tion and what­ev­er due dili­gence the com­pa­ny would have done to bring it to the board for the board to reg­is­ter its ob­jec­tion or its not ob­jec­tion.”

Seales called claims of po­lit­i­cal favouritism un­found­ed.

“For us to de­ter­mine whether that per­son was UNC or PNM was a bit dif­fi­cult and a bit far or over­reach­ing to think like that. That does not make sense and on the same to­ken, while the cur­rent min­is­ter has the stew­ard­ship of it, he is free to change that in any way he wants to.”

Al-Rawi re­sponds

For­mer min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi, in a state­ment yes­ter­day, said: “The pop­u­la­tion is re­mind­ed that min­is­ters do not en­gage in hir­ings of em­ploy­ees, con­trac­tors and work­ers at Cepep and NR­WRP which are man­aged and run un­der lim­it­ed li­a­bil­i­ty whol­ly owned State En­ter­pris­es.”

He claimed that based on the state­ments made dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, it seems dis­missals are on the hori­zon.

“It is note­wor­thy for cit­i­zens to care­ful­ly ob­serve that the Gov­ern­ment has ap­par­ent­ly con­firmed its seem­ing in­tent to fire the near 11,000 work­ers at Cepep as well as the over 4,000 work­ers at Forestry Na­tion­al Reaf­foresta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme (NR­WRP) pro­gramme—if one is to find mean­ing to the cu­mu­la­tive state­ments made by Min­is­ter Padarath as to ‘tak­ing in front’ and the ‘cur­tail­ing’ of al­leged ‘feed­ing at the trough’ which caus­es ‘a lot of pain’.”

Al-Rawi added that in just over a month of UNC in of­fice, “thou­sands of per­sons, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of whom earn as lit­tle as $120 a DAY, are plagued by the de­bil­i­tat­ing fear of job loss and out­right des­ti­tu­tion.”