Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

With hun­dreds of cit­i­zens anx­ious­ly await­ing news on po­ten­tial re-em­ploy­ment at the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP), the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter says the new board of the com­pa­ny will be an­nounced next week.

Guardian Me­dia asked Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath when the new board would be un­veiled, the min­is­ter said de­tails will be shared soon.

Asked when the board would be con­firmed, Padarath said, “by next week.”

Sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ments have tak­en place at CEPEP since the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) as­sumed of­fice.

On June 27, 2025, hun­dreds of CEPEP con­tracts, re­port­ed­ly over 300, were ter­mi­nat­ed, af­fect­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10, 500 work­ers.

Padarath stat­ed that this was due to dis­crep­an­cies such as im­prop­er ap­provals and to ad­dress what he called “wastage, mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion” un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), who he claimed was treat­ing CEPEP like a par­ty group.

A new CEPEP board is ex­pect­ed to be in­stalled, with a man­date to reg­is­ter new con­trac­tors un­der up­dat­ed stip­u­la­tions for im­proved trans­paren­cy and ef­fi­cien­cy.

The gov­ern­ment has stat­ed that ter­mi­nat­ed con­trac­tors will re­ceive one month’s pay­ment “in lieu of no­tice,” and are ex­pect­ed to com­pen­sate their work­ers for Ju­ly.

The PNM has strong­ly con­demned the ter­mi­na­tions.