As thou­sands of Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) work­ers re­main in lim­bo over the fu­ture of their jobs, cur­rent and for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ters Bar­ry Padarath and Mar­vin Gon­za­les con­tin­ue to trade blame over the award­ing of CEPEP con­tracts.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Padarath rub­bished claims made by Gon­za­les that there have been se­cret CEPEP hir­ings in Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ar­eas.

Ac­cord­ing to Padarath, CEPEP is cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing an au­dit, and there has been no in­vi­ta­tion to reg­is­ter or hire any con­trac­tors across the coun­try.

Padarath slammed Gon­za­les, MP for Lopinot/Bon Air West, for his con­tin­ued lies, cries, and ma­m­aguy on the is­sues sur­round­ing CEPEP.

The re­lease stat­ed Padarath re­ject­ed and rub­bished “claims made by Gon­za­les that there had been se­cret CEPEP hir­ing in UNC ar­eas. Sev­er­al me­dia out­lets car­ried the un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed al­le­ga­tions in to­day’s news cy­cle. Min­is­ter Padarath stat­ed that CEPEP is cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing an au­dit and that there has been ab­solute­ly no in­vi­ta­tion to reg­is­ter or hire any con­trac­tors across the coun­try.”

The Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter added that CEPEP has strayed far from its orig­i­nal moor­ings and that the Gov­ern­ment has been re­view­ing CEPEP’s op­er­a­tions. He added that CEPEP must be a tran­si­to­ry or­gan­i­sa­tion that helps peo­ple move in­to more sus­tain­able jobs, with a fo­cus on com­mu­ni­ty en­hance­ment and em­pow­er­ment.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les is dou­bling down on his claims that the UNC has been reach­ing out to con­trac­tors.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said, “Many peo­ple have called me in­di­cat­ing that they have been con­tact­ed by UNC con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tives ask­ing them to come and reg­is­ter their com­pa­ny and put down their names to be em­ployed in the pro­gramme. They were even asked whether they are sup­port­ers of the UNC.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so ob­tained a pho­to of a doc­u­ment, pur­port­ed by Gon­za­les as a doc­u­ment cur­rent­ly be­ing sent to spe­cif­ic con­trac­tors be­lieved to be as­so­ci­at­ed with the rul­ing par­ty.

Nev­er­the­less, Padarath slammed Gon­za­les, stat­ing the UNC does not op­er­ate un­der the same cor­rupt and non-trans­par­ent man­ner, which has be­come the norm un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

He said CEPEP will no longer be used as a po­lit­i­cal par­ty group un­der his watch.

The re­lease added, “In CEPEP, un­der the past PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, we saw over 60 per cent of con­trac­tors aris­ing out of con­stituen­cies held by the PNM dur­ing the 2016 to 2025 pe­ri­od.”

The min­is­ter added that Gon­za­les ap­peared to be suf­fer­ing from a se­vere case of am­ne­sia and re­mind­ed him that the same pro­pa­gan­da he is now push­ing re­flects the cor­rupt PNM prac­tices the pop­u­la­tion firm­ly re­ject­ed at the polls.

He re­mind­ed Gon­za­les that the pro­gramme was flagged by the Cen­tral Au­dit Com­mit­tee of the Min­istry of Fi­nance due to what he said were ques­tion­able hir­ing prac­tices.

He said there was no prop­er over­sight on pro­cure­ment with­in the pro­gramme and that the com­pa­ny did not sub­mit au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for sev­en years.