For­mer CEPEP con­trac­tors are plead­ing with the Gov­ern­ment to pay out­stand­ing monies owed to them af­ter their ter­mi­na­tion.

On June 27, around 300 CEPEP con­trac­tors were ter­mi­nat­ed. The Gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed rea­son for the mass ter­mi­na­tion was to al­low for a full au­dit of the pro­gramme due to al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and cor­rup­tion. The con­trac­tors were in­formed they would re­ceive one month’s pay in lieu of no­tice.

While some con­trac­tors have al­ready been paid in full, oth­ers told Guardian Me­dia they are still await­ing pay­ment, say­ing they have fall­en on hard times and are in des­per­ate need of the mon­ey owed to them.

Af­ter five years man­ag­ing her three teams (30 peo­ple) in Waller­field, Mar­lene Hazel, who owns Abil­i­ty Works and Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, said she is now strug­gling to make ends meet and fears los­ing her home.

Hazel said she is owed $40,000, which in­cludes the one-month pay in lieu of no­tice and a $20,000 man­age­ment fee. She said she has tried on many oc­ca­sions to find out the sta­tus of her pay­ment.

“They say they have no mon­ey, and I can’t un­der­stand how you all have no mon­ey. I have the bank call­ing me. Three months, I haven’t paid my mort­gage, and the bank is call­ing me be­cause I took out a loan,” she lament­ed.

She added, “All they said is they have no mon­ey.”

Hazel ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of “wicked­ness.”

“I sup­port­ed UNC, you know. Once I sup­port­ed UNC, but I would nev­er sup­port them again. Be­cause they say they’re for peo­ple and they’re not for peo­ple. And I want to be re­al. Yes, the PNM makes mis­takes. That’s why they’re in op­po­si­tion to­day. Be­cause they just for­get their own. So why the UNC can­not see about every­body?”

Hazel claimed that since the CEPEP con­tracts were can­celled, crime has risen again in Waller­field. This was not con­firmed by the po­lice ser­vice.

Mean­while, Shean Payne-Webb, a di­rec­tor of Si­mon and Payne, which op­er­at­ed in the La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro con­stituen­cy, said she was ini­tial­ly placed on a “black­list” and was then told that it was an ad­min­is­tra­tive er­ror.

“All our statu­to­ry pay­ments were up to date. I even have email con­fir­ma­tion about that from CEPEP. And when we queried, be­cause we keep call­ing, call­ing, call­ing, they told us that we were black­list­ed in er­ror. But we got one of the salaries, and we still have one out­stand­ing. So, I don’t un­der­stand where this black­list thing comes from.”

Payne-Webb said all at­tempts to query the out­stand­ing pay­ment were met with, “They don’t know what’s go­ing on. They’re not sure. They haven’t got­ten any word. Then one minute they’re say­ing they don’t have any mon­ey. So I don’t know.”

Kizzy Em­manuel of Bois­jen­jur Per­fec­tion­ers Land­scap­ers Lim­it­ed, which op­er­at­ed out of Moru­ga for the last sev­en years, said she was promised her mon­ey last Thurs­day.

“I had bills to pay, I had gro­ceries to buy, I had chil­dren to send to school. I have a lot of things to do with the mon­ey that I work for, and that is owed to me. When I called, they said that the mon­ey will be in the bank by Thurs­day, and Thurs­day passed, and there wasn’t any mon­ey in the bank.”

Em­manuel said CEPEP had asked her to send ad­di­tion­al re­ceipts to show com­pli­ance with Health Sur­charge pay­ments for her 30 em­ploy­ees. She claimed that was done, and she was then no­ti­fied that her pay­ment was ap­proved, but they were await­ing the funds to process it. Like Hazel, she too is owed $40,000.

While CEPEP now falls un­der the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that for the re­main­der of the fi­nan­cial year, the mon­ey al­lo­cat­ed to it would come from the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, which was the pre­vi­ous line min­istry for the com­pa­ny.

But Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen said yes­ter­day that her Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in­formed her that the min­istry has made all re­leas­es to date. The PS added that, up to last week, they had not seen any ad­di­tion­al re­quest from CEPEP, and the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties has not con­tact­ed them on any such mat­ter.