CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has al­lo­cat­ed $7 mil­lion to wind up the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP).

Ac­cord­ing to the Draft Es­ti­mates: De­tails of Es­ti­mates of Re­cur­rent Ex­pen­di­ture for the Fi­nan­cial Year 2026, the CEPEP al­lo­ca­tion was trans­ferred from the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath to find out what the funds were for.

Padarath said it will be used to “as­sist in wrap­ping up the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny, any out­stand­ing li­a­bil­i­ties, as well as the ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fices, un­til the com­pa­ny is ac­tu­al­ly wound up.”

In his 2026 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to end what he called state fund­ing of crim­i­nal gangs by phas­ing out the CEPEP and the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP).

Tan­coo said both pro­grammes will be re­placed with full-time, bet­ter-paid em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties as part of the Gov­ern­ment’s new job cre­ation strat­e­gy.

“This Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to end­ing the state fund­ing of crim­i­nal gangs by elim­i­nat­ing the CEPEP and URP and re­plac­ing them with pro­vid­ing full-time, bet­ter-paid jobs,” he told the Par­lia­ment dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion.

He said an Em­ploy­ment Fund, with an al­lo­ca­tion of $475 mil­lion, has been es­tab­lished with­in the Min­istry of Fi­nance to sup­port the ini­tia­tive. This will be sup­ple­ment­ed by $310 mil­lion from the Un­em­ploy­ment Fund.

“The Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter will pro­vide greater de­tail on this very crit­i­cal job cre­ation ex­er­cise dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion,” Tan­coo said.

Al­so con­tact­ed for com­ment on the move yes­ter­day, for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young again de­scribed the CEPEP clo­sure as heart­less.

“The Gov­ern­ment has found it­self in se­ri­ous trou­ble with its han­dling of CEPEP and has been mak­ing very wild state­ments as to why they ter­mi­nat­ed 350 con­trac­tors en masse, and thou­sands of work­ers were ter­mi­nat­ed. The mat­ter is now be­fore the courts, whilst over 10,000 work­ers have lost their liveli­hoods and thou­sands of fam­i­lies are strug­gling to make ends meet. This is an­oth­er cal­lous and heart­less move by the Gov­ern­ment as it ap­pears they are now look­ing to avoid li­a­bil­i­ty,” he said.

Young heads a team of lawyers rep­re­sent­ing a group of fired CEPEP con­trac­tors chal­leng­ing their dis­missals in court.

An­oth­er Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment in­sid­er in­di­cat­ed that the mat­ter will most def­i­nite­ly be ad­dressed by PNM leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les when she of­fi­cial­ly re­sponds to the 2026 Bud­get to­day.

On June 27, over 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.