For­mer min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi is break­ing his si­lence on al­le­ga­tions tied to on­go­ing lit­i­ga­tion in­volv­ing the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP). Al-Rawi said the in­for­ma­tion be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed is in­tend­ed to “de­ceive the pub­lic”.

The al­le­ga­tions, made pub­lic by CEPEP CEO Kei­th Ed­dy, were that Al-Rawi pres­sured him to ap­prove the mass re­new­al of con­trac­tor con­tracts with­out Cab­i­net ap­proval in the days lead­ing up to the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

The claims have been tak­en up by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), with Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath urg­ing Al-Rawi to ad­dress the is­sue.

“The for­mer prime min­is­ter and the line min­is­ter, to­geth­er with all cab­i­net min­is­ters, have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go to say whether any mem­ber of the PNM pres­sured the CEO of CEPEP to ex­tend these con­tracts. I am ask­ing whether any of them mis­led fraud­u­lent­ly,  a rep­re­sen­ta­tion that the cab­i­net did in fact give the ap­proval for $1.4 bil­lion in ex­pen­di­ture that has now found its way on pub­lic record through the court. Usu­al­ly, for­mer min­is­ter Al-Rawi is very vo­cal on these is­sues, and there­fore his si­lence is deaf­en­ing.”

But in a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi cau­tioned against the pre­ma­ture and politi­cised dis­cus­sion of pro­ceed­ings still be­fore the courts.

“It is in­ap­pro­pri­ate while the mat­ter is be­ing ac­tive­ly con­sid­ered by the court for per­sons to be re­leas­ing af­fi­davit ev­i­dence untest­ed by cross-ex­am­i­na­tion and call­ing up­on oth­ers to com­ment on such ev­i­dence,” said Al-Rawi. “The de­ter­mi­na­tion of the lit­i­ga­tion against CEPEP is im­por­tant to 11,000 work­ers and their fam­i­ly mem­bers.”

Al-Rawi crit­i­cised what he called the “pub­lic trad­ing of spe­cif­ic al­le­ga­tions” and sug­gest­ed that the UNC’s ap­proach risks com­pro­mis­ing the in­tegri­ty of the le­gal process.

“To en­gage in pub­lic trad­ing of spe­cif­ic al­le­ga­tions now be­fore the Court, in the man­ner prompt­ed by the UNC, would not be in the best in­ter­ests of the heart of the lit­i­ga­tion, to find re­lief for bru­talised work­ers dis­missed by CEPEP’s ac­tions,” he added.

The for­mer min­is­ter al­so hint­ed at what he de­scribed as a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to dis­tort pub­lic per­cep­tion by se­lec­tive­ly re­leas­ing in­for­ma­tion.

“With a view to­wards halt­ing at­tempts at scan­dal­i­sa­tion, I can say that clear­ly not all in­for­ma­tion has been put in­to the pub­lic do­main in a clear at­tempt to de­ceive the pub­lic,” Al-Rawi said.

Al-Rawi al­so took aim at the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter.

“Mr Padarath has clear and vest­ed in­ter­ests in his own po­lit­i­cal agen­da, which will be prop­er­ly ad­dressed in due course.”

Back in June, CEPEP ter­mi­nat­ed the con­tracts of over 300 CEPEP con­trac­tors af­fect­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 10,000-plus work­ers.

It came af­ter the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that an au­dit would be con­duct­ed in­to CEPEP fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The PNM and a dis­missed con­trac­tor are chal­leng­ing the dis­missal in court.

Mean­while, Padarath said the com­plete CEPEP Board will be an­nounced by to­mor­row, Thurs­day.

Yes­ter­day, Padarath ex­plained that while some mem­bers of the board have al­ready been ap­point­ed and are ac­tive­ly work­ing, Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to fi­nalise the re­main­ing ap­point­ments to en­sure the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s op­er­a­tions con­tin­ue with­out dis­rup­tion. He said the au­dit is al­so on­go­ing.

He al­so said pay­ments are cur­rent­ly be­ing made to ter­mi­nat­ed CEPEP con­trac­tors.