DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) chair­man Joel Ed­wards has of­fi­cial­ly de­nied al­le­ga­tions that he ad­vised the com­pa­ny’s of­fi­cials that the then-cab­i­net had ap­proved the three-year ex­ten­sion of con­tracts days be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion on April 28. 

Ed­wards made the claim on Tues­day in an af­fi­davit filed in re­sponse to an ap­pli­ca­tion from CEPEP Com­pa­ny to strike out a law­suit brought by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) on be­half of Laven­tille-based gen­er­al con­tract­ing com­pa­ny East­man En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed, who was among the 300 con­trac­tors who were re­cent­ly ter­mi­nat­ed by the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)-led coali­tion Gov­ern­ment. 

On Mon­day, CEPEP’s le­gal team, led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, filed the ap­pli­ca­tion with at­tached af­fi­davits from CEPEP’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO), Kei­th Ed­dy, its head of le­gal/cor­po­rate sec­re­tary, Nicole Gopauls­ingh, and Neela Ram-At­wa­roo, the act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties. 

The ap­pli­ca­tion is ex­pect­ed to be raised on Fri­day when High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed con­sid­ers a sep­a­rate in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion from the now-op­po­si­tion par­ty to stay the re­cent de­ci­sion of the Gov­ern­ment to ter­mi­nate the con­tracts and block the pos­si­ble ap­point­ment of re­place­ment con­trac­tors. 

In his ev­i­dence, Ed­dy claimed that the con­tracts, which were due to end in Sep­tem­ber 2026, were on­ly ex­tend­ed af­ter Ed­wards told him that the then-cab­i­net had ap­proved such a move. 

Ed­wards, a char­tered ac­coun­tant, gave a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of events in his af­fi­davit. 

Ed­wards said, “In my dis­cus­sions with the CEO, we spoke about the is­sue of Cab­i­net ap­proval and we won­dered whether same was re­quired, but no de­ci­sion was made on that is­sue of ob­tain­ing Cab­i­net ap­proval.” 

While he ad­mit­ted that a note over the ex­ten­sion, that was sub­se­quent­ly ap­proved by CEPEP’s board, stat­ed that such had been ac­cept­ed by the cab­i­net, he claimed that it (the note) was lat­er cor­rect­ed.

How­ev­er, he did not pro­vide the cor­rect­ed note. 

“I have made a dili­gent search in my per­son­al files and records to find a copy of the cor­rect­ed board note, but have been un­able to lo­cate it,” Ed­wards said. 

For­mer min­is­ter and Arou­ca/Lopinot MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les de­clined to com­ment on the vary­ing ac­counts placed be­fore the court while ad­dress­ing an Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing. Gon­za­les ac­cused the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment of seek­ing to im­prop­er­ly lit­i­gate the case in the “court of pub­lic opin­ion”. 

“The Op­po­si­tion is not go­ing to be bait­ed by UNC op­er­a­tors by re­spond­ing to claims and af­fi­davits filed in le­gal pro­ceed­ings ... This mat­ter is sched­uled to be heard on Fri­day,” Gon­za­les said. 

Asked, gen­er­al­ly, whether state boards would have re­quired Cab­i­net ap­proval to re­new con­tracts, Gon­za­les said no. 

“The ap­proval for the award of con­tracts, it is with­in the sole do­main of the Board of State Agen­cies as well as the Chief Pro­cure­ment Of­fi­cers in the re­spec­tive state agen­cies as it re­lates to, and that is very con­sis­tent with the new pro­cure­ment regime that this coun­try has been op­er­at­ing un­der over the last four years,” Gon­za­les said. 

“The Cab­i­net has ab­solute­ly no role what­so­ev­er with re­spect to ap­prov­ing the award of con­tracts,” he added. 

Gon­za­les main­tained that the po­si­tion was not dif­fer­ent, even if such de­ci­sions by state boards would be de­pen­dent on gov­ern­ment fund­ing. 

“Some­times you will make a de­ci­sion over a three-year pe­ri­od, and that’s what it is. And then you will come to Cab­i­net and you will come to Par­lia­ment to get the ap­pro­pri­ate al­lo­ca­tion that will take you to­wards the end of this pe­ri­od of time, this cur­rent fis­cal year, or the mid-term re­view,” he said. 

In a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath claimed that Cab­i­net ap­proval was re­quired as he ref­er­enced cor­re­spon­dence from the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, who con­firmed the re­quire­ment. 

“The con­tract ex­ten­sions span three to four bud­get cy­cles and there­fore, it is manda­to­ry that ap­proval would have been re­quired, par­tic­u­lar­ly for this sig­nif­i­cant ex­pen­di­ture. I wish to as­sure the peo­ple of T&T that this is not a cri­te­ria that is be­ing made up,” he said. 

Padarath called on for­mer Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi, who served as line min­is­ter for CEPEP be­fore the elec­tion, to clear the air on the is­sue. 

“Who is ly­ing and why? Who fab­ri­cat­ed this dan­ger­ous sto­ry about Cab­i­net ap­proval to in­flu­ence the CEPEP board in­to ex­tend­ing these con­tracts when no such ap­proval ex­ists?” Padarath said, as he called on for­mer board mem­bers to al­so weigh in on the is­sue. 

Stat­ing that the lack of ap­proval was an act of po­lit­i­cal cor­rup­tion, Padarath said he was in the process of re­ceiv­ing le­gal ad­vice on re­port­ing the is­sue to the Fraud Squad and An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau. 

“Any pub­lic of­fi­cial who is pre­pared to fab­ri­cate a lie about the Cab­i­net of the coun­try grant­i­ng ap­proval for a $1.4 bil­lion com­mit­ment, by ex­tend­ing all CEPEP con­tracts, has per­pet­u­at­ed a se­ri­ous fraud on the pub­lic purse,” he said. 

“Rest as­sured, they would be held to ac­count and be made to feel the full weight and brunt of the law,” he added.