The re­cent rev­e­la­tion that the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme Com­pa­ny (CEPEP) Lim­it­ed sent home sev­er­al man­agers ear­li­er this year, paid them off with pub­lic funds and then had them sign non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments reeks of, at best, a lack of trans­paren­cy.

This is not the first time that a gov­ern­ment agency has used pub­lic funds to pay-off peo­ple and have them sign such non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments, all in an ap­par­ent ef­fort to avoid the pub­lic learn­ing of the cir­cum­stances which led to the ac­tion and of what tax­pay­ers' mon­ey was be­ing used for.

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein in­ad­ver­tent­ly spilt the beans when he de­nied that he was be­hind the send­ing home of the em­ploy­ees, blam­ing it in­stead on the board of di­rec­tors. He, how­ev­er, con­firmed that the for­mer em­ploy­ees did not re­sign and were paid off af­ter the board dis­cussed the mat­ter and made such a de­ci­sion, one which his min­istry ul­ti­mate­ly agreed with.

CEPEP gen­er­al man­ag­er Kei­th Ed­dy mean­while said the de­ci­sion to pay-off the man­agers was as a re­sult of a board de­ci­sion to re­struc­ture the com­pa­ny and he could not say more be­cause of fear of breach of the non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment.

Re­mind­ed that the of­fi­cials were paid with pub­lic funds, Ed­dy de­nied it was an at­tempt to hide the in­for­ma­tion. Ef­fec­tive­ly, how­ev­er, what this means is that John Pub­lic has been de­nied the right to find out how much CEPEP would have spent on this ex­er­cise and whether, quite apart from Ed­dy's claims of re­struc­tur­ing of the en­ti­ty, whether malfea­sance in of­fice or in­ep­ti­tude may have been part­ly re­spon­si­ble for the de­ci­sion as well.

This is un­ac­cept­able from an or­gan­i­sa­tion many feel is one of the sev­er­al en­ti­ties which dole out pub­lic funds to in­di­vid­u­als in­volved make-work pro­grammes with­out any re­turns on the in­vest­ment.

We re­mem­ber too well the saga of for­mer Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs Dar­ryl Smith, whose staff mem­ber Car­rie-Ann More­au was paid a sig­nif­i­cant sum of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey and a sim­i­lar non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment signed to en­sure the in­for­ma­tion of what led to her de­par­ture was al­so kept from John Pub­lic be­fore the me­dia par­tial­ly ex­posed some of the de­tails. That the Prime Min­is­ter has so re­fused to make pub­lic the find­ings of a re­port in­to what oc­curred with this case is noth­ing short of a fi­as­co.

It is per­haps this prece­dent which now al­lows state en­ter­pris­es like CEPEP, which has nev­er made a prof­it and re­lies on an­nu­al ap­pro­pri­a­tions, to feel it can dis­burse tax­pay­ers' mon­ey with­out trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, as Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, must in­ves­ti­gate this and make pub­lic the rea­sons for the send­ing home of al­most the en­tire CEPEP man­age­ment and the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing this lat­est non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment.

Noth­ing less will suf­fice.