JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says he is un­fazed as more law­suits are brought against him and the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

He made the com­ment yes­ter­day, af­ter High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed grant­ed leave to three more fired CEPEP con­trac­tors to sue the State.

The com­pa­nies, rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney San­jiv Bood­hu, are Hughe­len Gen­er­al Con­trac­tors Ltd, of Princes Town; Base Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Ltd, of San­gre Grande; and Vi­sion En­gi­neer­ing Lim­it­ed, of Mara­bel­la.

They want their dis­missals over­turned, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of brand­ing them mem­bers of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and not even no­ti­fy­ing them about an au­dit in­to CEPEP.

The com­pa­nies sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter on Sep­tem­ber 15, ad­dress­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as head of the Cab­i­net, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, Padarath, CEPEP and CEPEP CEO Kei­th Ed­dy.

The let­ter, which gave the de­fen­dants up to Sep­tem­ber 19 to re­spond, chal­lenged the con­trac­tors’ dis­missals. The com­pa­nies lat­er ap­plied for leave on Sep­tem­ber 26, which was grant­ed on Wednes­day. The mat­ter is set for De­cem­ber 3.

The law­suit comes as CEPEP is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in oth­er le­gal chal­lenges brought by oth­er con­trac­tors, all al­leg­ing their dis­missals were un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Yes­ter­day, the Ap­peal Court was sched­uled to hear sub­mis­sions by fired con­trac­tor East­man En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed over his dis­missal, but this was ad­journed to Oc­to­ber 31. The Laven­tille-based gen­er­al con­tract­ing com­pa­ny is ap­peal­ing Jus­tice Mo­hammed’s find­ings, when she stayed its claim and re­ferred as­pects of the case to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard.

East­man ar­gues that the judge was wrong to in­volve the DPP, who has no in­ves­tiga­tive pow­ers in such mat­ters, and to rule that the com­pa­ny was re­quired to pur­sue me­di­a­tion and ar­bi­tra­tion be­fore fil­ing its suit, based on a clause in its con­tract. The com­pa­ny fur­ther claims she should have con­sid­ered its re­quest for an in­junc­tion to stay the ter­mi­na­tions and pre­vent the ap­point­ment of re­place­ment con­trac­tors. East­man al­so con­tends that Jus­tice Mo­hammed made pre­ma­ture find­ings on whether Cab­i­net ap­proval was re­quired for the con­tract ex­ten­sions, with­out all the ev­i­dence be­ing pre­sent­ed and test­ed un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion.

Min­is­ter re­sponds

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Padarath said Gov­ern­ment was con­fi­dent it would be able to de­fend it­self against the ac­tion brought by the three con­trac­tors.

“We feel very strong­ly and con­fi­dent­ly that this, too, will meet a sim­i­lar fate as the oth­ers have met in the courts. Se­nior coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan has been re­tained to treat and deal with these mat­ters, while sev­er­al pub­lic ut­ter­ances and is­sues tak­en up with CEPEP have been cit­ed as part of the lit­i­ga­tion. I stand be­fore them and I feel very strong­ly about those po­si­tions that we have adopt­ed,” Padarath said.

He added that like the East­man case, the court will rule in Gov­ern­ment’s favour.

“We will see those per­sons in court and I ex­pect that it will face the same fate as the oth­ers have faced. We ex­er­cised very care­ful­ly and very cau­tious­ly the con­di­tions that were es­tab­lished in the con­tracts be­tween CEPEP and these for­mer con­trac­tors. So, now, I leave it up to the courts but as I said, I feel very con­fi­dent­ly, based on the ac­tions that were tak­en pre­vi­ous­ly and the po­si­tions that the court has adopt­ed in the last mat­ter that were brought, I be­lieve a sim­i­lar fate will be de­ter­mined with the oth­ers.”

The three con­trac­tors, who were among 350 oth­ers whose deals were ter­mi­nat­ed on June 27, want the court to de­clare that the Cab­i­net, Tan­coo and Padarath fired them in bad faith and took in­to ac­count ir­rel­e­vant con­sid­er­a­tions, which they claim was an abuse of pow­er.

The com­pa­nies want the court to quash the de­ci­sion of the Cab­i­net, Tan­coo and Padarath to fire them and are seek­ing dam­ages from all five de­fen­dants, in­clud­ing ag­gra­vat­ed and ex­em­plary dam­ages and vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages.

Con­tract de­tails

In their pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter, Base Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Ltd and Vi­sion En­gi­neer­ing Lim­it­ed said they be­gan their three-year con­tracts in Feb­ru­ary 2023, which were ex­tend­ed by an ad­den­dum on April 23, 2025, with the new end date on Feb­ru­ary 13, 2029.

Hughe­len Gen­er­al Con­trac­tor Ltd was con­tract­ed for three years, which be­gan be­tween April and May 2023, and had an ad­den­dum on April 23, 2025, tak­ing the ex­pi­ra­tion date of the con­tract to May 9, 2029.

The com­pa­nies said, dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing two days af­ter their dis­missals, Padarath said an au­dit dis­cov­ered that con­trac­tors were be­ing hired from out­side the com­mu­ni­ties they were op­er­at­ing in, which he said was a rea­son for their dis­missals.

Padarath, the let­ter stat­ed, al­so claimed some con­trac­tors were be­hold­en to the PNM.

The con­trac­tors ve­he­ment­ly de­nied this.

“Our clients de­ny and cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­ject any sug­ges­tion that they were serv­ing peo­ple with­in the PNM. Our clients were serv­ing the in­ter­ests of their re­spec­tive com­mu­ni­ties by clean­ing up these com­mu­ni­ties and hir­ing per­sons from with­in these com­mu­ni­ties.”

The let­ter stat­ed that Padarath ac­cused con­trac­tors of be­ing in­volved in cor­rup­tion, lead­ing to the ter­mi­na­tions, which the con­trac­tors de­nied. They claimed the Gov­ern­ment and CEPEP did not fol­low due process, as they were not af­ford­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to the al­le­ga­tions, which they first heard when they were made pub­licly. The con­trac­tors claimed they had re­ceived no ad­verse re­ports about the per­for­mance of their du­ties be­fore the claims were made by Padarath.

“No ef­fort was made by any gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary or au­di­tor/s or CEPEP or its agents to com­mu­ni­cate with our clients at all pri­or to the ad­verse find­ings, com­men­tary or de­ci­sions be­ing made against them. Our clients have been wrong­ly and un­fair­ly brand­ed by the Gov­ern­ment as be­ing as­so­ci­at­ed with un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion against them and/or as some­how be­ing cor­rupt and/or en­gaged in cor­rupt acts with­out any ev­i­dence and/or par­tic­i­pa­to­ry en­quiry what­so­ev­er,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The let­ter added that the con­trac­tors were not no­ti­fied by CEPEP of an au­dit be­ing un­der­tak­en, nor were they in­ter­viewed or asked to pro­vide any in­for­ma­tion or doc­u­ments to the un­known au­di­tor.