Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Over 360 Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (Cepep) con­tracts were re­newed for a pe­ri­od of three years from April 14-April 24, be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion, al­though there was no Cab­i­net ap­proval for this, claims Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath.

Padarath re­vealed this at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Red House. He said an au­dit is now be­ing done on Cepep, in­clud­ing on the con­tracts.

Padarath spoke fol­low­ing re­cent warn­ings by Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi, whom Padarath ac­cused of “cry­ing wolf and tak­ing in front.”

Padarath not­ed that Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture Sad­dam Ho­sein had shared in­for­ma­tion that 73 long-term con­tracts in the Na­tion­al Reaf­foresta­tion Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme were en­tered in­to on April 25, days be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion and some were signed on elec­tion day. Ho­sein said it meant every con­trac­tor would be paid a fort­night­ly sum of $45,756, which he claimed was used for elec­tion­eer­ing and con­tracts were as­signed to mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies. Re­views are now on re­gard­ing the Reaf­foresta­tion con­tracts award­ed and hir­ing prac­tices.

Padarath said as the new line min­is­ter for Cepep - for­mer­ly un­der the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry - he met Cepep’s man­age­ment to as­cer­tain the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial stand­ing and if it had been meet­ing its man­date, “be­cause for quite a while, it seems Cepep was a run­away horse, and like Reaf­foresta­tion we’ve found it was used as a play­ground for PNM politi­cians - par­ty hacks who sought the ben­e­fits of the State as op­posed to look­ing af­ter the State’s in­ter­est.”

Padarath said, “Sim­i­lar­ly to what oc­curred in Reaf­foresta­tion, we dis­cov­ered that over 360 Cepep con­tracts were re­newed for a pe­ri­od of three years dur­ing April 14-April 24, 2025. I was ad­vised by Cepep’s man­age­ment that there was no Cab­i­net ap­proval for this. We searched, there’s no Cab­i­net note. In­stead, Cepep man­age­ment was ad­vised first that it did re­quire Cab­i­net ap­proval.”

He said he spoke to the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen on whether the note ex­ist­ed but she said her min­istry’s staff ad­vised her that when that pro­pos­al was brought, the man­age­ment - per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, tech­nocrats - re­fused to ef­fect the ex­ist­ing con­tracts get­ting a three-year ex­ten­sion by the for­mer gov­ern­ment.

“They re­fused to car­ry out that on the eve of a gen­er­al elec­tion,” Padarath added.

He said Cepep con­trac­tors “bal­looned” from when the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress left of­fice in 2015 to 360 present­ly.

“And out of 350 con­tracts that were award­ed over 275 of them func­tioned and op­er­at­ed out of PNM held con­stituen­cies - close to 75 per cent of Cepep con­tracts award­ed over the past 10 years op­er­at­ed out of PNM held con­stituen­cies,” he claimed

Padarath said an­oth­er is­sue con­cerned how some­one be­came a Cepep con­trac­tor.

“Man­age­ment al­so told me min­is­ters would call up in terms of who would be­come a Cepep con­trac­tor. There was no trans­paren­cy in the process. In­stead, it was used as a par­ty sys­tem avail­able for re­ward­ing PNM boys and girls. Some Cepep con­trac­tors re­ceived, in many in­stances, in ex­cess of two to three gangs,” he claimed.

He said op­er­at­ing as con­trac­tors saw re­turns of $40,000-$50,000 month­ly, “So you can un­der­stand why the cur­tail­ing of the ‘feed­ing at the trough’ with the PNM out of of­fice caus­es Al-Rawi much pain.”

Padarath cit­ed an­oth­er is­sue he said would cause an­oth­er for­mer min­is­ter a lot of pain. He said at Cepep, a build­ing was rent­ed along the East-West cor­ri­dor to move Cepep out of Ste Madeleine.

“Now I’ve put a stop to it as there’s no con­trac­tu­al ar­rang­ments any­more. The lease ex­pired. But to the cost of tax­pay­ers for three years at a cost of over $3.5 mil­lion. The rel­a­tives of a for­mer se­nior PNM min­is­ter re­ceived the lease and the con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments ben­e­fit­ting di­rect­ly while that build­ing was nev­er oc­cu­pied for the three years it was leased for.”

New PS

The Min­istries of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and De­fence on Mon­day an­nounced two new per­ma­nent sec­re­taries to those min­istries.

This af­ter the PS and act­ing PS in the for­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry along with a min­istry staffer were trans­ferred to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter af­ter a vis­it by for­mer min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds. All three were in­struct­ed to re­port to OPM.

The min­istries on Mon­day an­nounced that Videsh Ma­haraj was ap­point­ed PS in Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and ac­count­ing of­fi­cer for that min­istry and De­fence. Nar­ine Char­ran was al­so ap­point­ed PS in the De­fence Min­istry. In re­cent weeks per­ma­nent sec­re­taries have been moved around.