RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein claims that 32 of the 326 Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) con­trac­tors were struck off the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry.

He made the rev­e­la­tion at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ Mon­day Night Fo­rum at Pe­nal Sec­ondary School last night, al­leg­ing that some of the con­trac­tors who have chal­lenged their ter­mi­na­tion in court were not even legal­ly reg­is­tered en­ti­ties.

“You know they filed a case for a com­pa­ny that got struck off the reg­istry since Feb­ru­ary,” Ho­sein told the packed au­di­ence, warn­ing er­rant con­trac­tors to avoid le­gal ac­tion or risk pay­ing high le­gal costs.

The is­sue arose af­ter sev­er­al CEPEP con­trac­tors, through a le­gal team that in­clud­ed se­nior at­tor­neys, filed court chal­lenges against Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate their con­tracts. Ho­sein de­scribed the le­gal ac­tion as pre­ma­ture and with­out mer­it.

“In less than 24 hours, when they saw Anand Ram­lo­gan, they with­drew the case,” Ho­sein said.

“The on­ly silk them fel­las de­serve is a silky-smooth paratha,” he added, as the au­di­ence ap­plaud­ed.

He said one con­trac­tor col­lect­ed about $7 mil­lion while be­ing rep­re­sent­ed as a “poor per­son” in the pub­lic eye.

“They didn’t rep­re­sent no poor per­son. They were rep­re­sent­ing the sev­en-mil­lion-dol­lar con­trac­tor,” he de­clared.

Ho­sein called on con­trac­tors to be cau­tious and not be ma­nip­u­lat­ed by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

“Be care­ful with them PNM fel­las. Be­cause they will go to court, you will lose your case and you have to pay se­nior coun­sel fees,” he added.

The re­cent dis­missal of over 300 CEPEP con­trac­tors has sparked con­tro­ver­sy, with Op­po­si­tion fig­ures ac­cus­ing Gov­ern­ment of po­lit­i­cal tar­get­ing and con­trac­tors seek­ing ju­di­cial re­view.

But Ho­sein dis­missed the le­gal ar­gu­ments raised so far. “The first thing you have to do is check to see if the com­pa­ny is reg­is­tered,” he said.

“A sim­ple search in the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry can tell you that a com­pa­ny called [name with­held] did not file an­nu­al re­turns for six years and col­lect­ed gov­ern­ment mon­ey.”

He said one com­pa­ny in­volved in the case was not even found in the reg­istry.

“I can tell you tonight that 32 of those com­pa­nies were struck off from the reg­istry. Thir­ty-two. And one com­pa­ny was not even found on the reg­istry. Could you imag­ine that? Heads must roll at CEPEP.”

He al­so ques­tioned whether some CEPEP con­tracts were po­lit­i­cal­ly in­flu­enced. He named sev­er­al com­pa­nies and linked them to in­di­vid­u­als af­fil­i­at­ed with the PNM.

Hold­ing up doc­u­ments, Ho­sein said: “One par­tic­u­lar com­pa­ny was giv­en the con­tract on the 1st of March 2023, and the con­tract ends on the 28th of April 2029. A per­son who has ben­e­fi­cial own­er­ship in this com­pa­ny is [name with­held]... I won­der if this is the same PNM coun­cil­lor in the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion.”

He con­tin­ued: “I want to ask Faris if he knows [name with­held]. They got a sev­en-year con­tract. And then there’s an­oth­er com­pa­ny owned by a for­mer PNM coun­cil­lor.”

Ho­sein claimed this com­pa­ny was struck off the reg­istry on Jan­u­ary 9, 2025.

“So, you un­der­stand when they go on the me­dia and they say they’re rep­re­sent­ing poor peo­ple — you see who they’re re­al­ly rep­re­sent­ing? Friends, fam­i­ly, fi­nanciers, and PNM ac­tivists,” he said.

Last Fri­day, hun­dreds of CEPEP work­ers staged a protest over Gov­ern­ment’s ter­mi­na­tion of over 300 con­trac­tors, af­fect­ing a re­port­ed 10,500 work­ers.

Last week, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen said CEPEP was rid­dled with cor­rup­tion. She said of the $60 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to CEPEP, $3.5 mil­lion was used to lease an un­used build­ing al­leged­ly tied to a for­mer se­nior min­is­ter’s rel­a­tive. She said over 360 con­tracts were re­newed just days be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion with­out Cab­i­net ap­proval.