Between 160 and 175 of the 265 contractors employed with the Community-based Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme (CEPEP) will be axed from the programme for now, but the 12,000-odd employees currently engaged will stay.
In fact, once the budgetary allocation to CEPEP was maintained in the next fiscal year, the number of employees was likely to rise and the new set of contractors would be “community persons” from constituencies all over T&T, chairman Trevor Lynch said yesterday.
“The CEPEP company wishes to hereby state for the purpose of clarification that the change out of contractors under the current restructuring of the programme will not affect the 12,000-odd employees currently engaged with the programme,” Lynch said in response to questions from the T&T Guardian.
“Once the subventions are maintained in the next financial year, the CEPEP employment figure is likely to rise as the company increases efficiencies and reduces wastage,” he added.
As for the contractors, he said: “There are 265 contractors now. We wouldn’t change all yet, just between 160 to 175. We don’t know what the next budget will be like. This is in case there is a reduction in subvention.”
Lynch’s “revised statement” giving assurance that none of the 12,000-odd employees will lose their jobs came one day after CEPEP put out a two-page media statement in the daily newspapers to correct “grossly inaccurate” statements made by former housing minister, Dr Roodal Moonilal, on the company’s restructuring plan.
In the statement, the company indicated that 90 per cent of the contractors who were employed with the programme for more than five years would not have their contracts renewed. The statement resulted in some confusion among CEPEP labourers who feared they would also lose their jobs.
In a telephone interview with the T&T Guardian yesterday, Lynch said: “We are really adjusting the contractors who have been with the company for over five years. Not the employees, most of them will be retained.”
Screening process
Putting to rest notions that the restructuring was an undercover plot to rehire friends and associates, Lynch said in order to avoid that very thing the company had placed ads in the newspapers since December last year asking contractors to apply.
“We got 3,000 applications but we have been screening them,” he said.
Outlining the selection criteria, he said the company had a plan to cover all the constituencies.
“We want the contractors to be from the constituencies and they must be community persons, not like big people,” he added.
He said some previous contractors were big business people.
In its newspaper media statement, CEPEP said each of the existing contractors who were employed for over five years had six teams comprising ten workers a team and earned $3,500,000.
It said most of those contractors had their contracts renewed in the weeks preceding last year’s general election even though the former board and management knew they were not paying health surcharge, national insurance, Value Added Tax and the Green Fund Levy to the State on behalf of their employees.
CEPEP also pointed out that workers were paid by the company and not the contractors.