Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Dain Ma­haraj has been ap­point­ed chair­man of the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP), but there is still no clear time­line for hir­ing new con­trac­tors—a move that could po­ten­tial­ly pave the way for the re-em­ploy­ment of re­cent­ly ter­mi­nat­ed work­ers.

While the full com­ple­ment of the board is yet to be re­vealed, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, who is the line min­is­ter for CEPEP, con­firmed that Ma­haraj would head the board.

“His back­ground is in En­vi­ron­men­tal and En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ences—Mas­ter’s de­gree—and he is very much fa­mil­iar with the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny in terms of the type of work that they do and so on,” Padarath said.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side of Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Padarath said there were sev­en mem­bers on CEPEP’s new board, and the names would be made pub­lic soon.

He added that the board has been in place for the past month, but it had not yet been pub­licly an­nounced as some ap­point­ments were still be­ing fi­nalised.

Asked about their im­me­di­ate man­date, Padarath said, “Well, their im­me­di­ate man­date has been to re­view the op­er­a­tions of CEPEP. As you are aware, the au­dits are be­ing done right now with re­spect to the ex­ten­sion of over 323 con­tracts, as well as the op­er­a­tions in terms of the com­pa­ny it­self. There are a num­ber of em­ploy­ees that re­main at the com­pa­ny of CEPEP, so that is al­so be­ing re­viewed.”

The min­is­ter added, “One of the main things that the board is look­ing at is the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments. CEPEP has not been au­dit­ed for the last sev­en years, so that is one of the main things they’ve been man­dat­ed to fo­cus on—get­ting au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments avail­able to the Par­lia­ment, which by law are re­quired to be laid in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.”

Weeks ago, when Guardian Me­dia asked Padarath about the re­hir­ing of con­trac­tors fol­low­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of over 300 con­tracts due to “se­ri­ous dis­crep­an­cies” and a “lack of prop­er ap­provals” with­in CEPEP, he said the new­ly-in­stalled board would ad­vise him on the way for­ward.

Asked for an up­date yes­ter­day, Padarath said that is still un­der re­view.

“Well, the board in it­self is mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to the Gov­ern­ment. The Gov­ern­ment is al­so re­view­ing those poli­cies with re­spect to CEPEP, URP and Re­for­esta­tion. So in due course, we will share that with the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in terms of what is Gov­ern­ment’s pol­i­cy and plan for these com­pa­nies go­ing ahead.”

CEPEP is cur­rent­ly em­broiled in sev­er­al le­gal chal­lenges stem­ming from the re­cent ter­mi­na­tion of con­trac­tor agree­ments.

Mean­while, CEPEP is threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion against its for­mer chair­man, Joel Ed­wards, for al­leged breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ty, fraud, fraud­u­lent mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and mis­fea­sance in pub­lic of­fice. They claim he mis­led the board in­to ex­tend­ing con­tracts on a false rep­re­sen­ta­tion that Cab­i­net had ap­proved the re­newals. Ed­wards has de­nied any wrong­do­ing.