DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Gov­ern­ment-run cor­po­ra­tions have wel­comed the pro­posed Na­tion­al Pro­gramme for the Up­keep of Pub­lic Spaces, while op­po­si­tion-led re­gions warn the ini­tia­tive falls short of the scale and reach of the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP).

Con­cerns are al­so mount­ing over po­ten­tial le­gal chal­lenges. An op­po­si­tion at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing three for­mer CEPEP con­trac­tors said the State could face lit­i­ga­tion if those con­trac­tors are ex­clud­ed from the new hir­ing process.

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen con­firmed the pro­gramme in a state­ment on Thurs­day night, af­ter a Cab­i­net note out­lin­ing the ini­tia­tive was leaked. She stressed that the plan is not a re­vival of CEPEP, but a pi­lot project aimed at di­rect­ly em­ploy­ing work­ers through the min­istry.

Un­der the pro­pos­al, work­ers would be or­gan­ised in­to struc­tured teams as­signed to mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions, over­seen by four re­gion­al co­or­di­na­tors cov­er­ing the north, east, cen­tral, and south. Each team would in­clude a main­te­nance su­per­vi­sor, a com­pli­ance check­er, and ten main­te­nance work­ers, at a to­tal month­ly cost of $284,960.

By con­trast, CEPEP op­er­at­ed a broad­er struc­ture, in­clud­ing a head of op­er­a­tions, su­per­vis­ing and re­gion­al co­or­di­na­tors, field of­fi­cers, and pri­vate con­trac­tors, each man­ag­ing teams of up to 30 work­ers and a fore­man.

A for­mer CEPEP em­ploy­ee, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, told Guardian Me­dia that con­trac­tors and staff were sourced with­in the com­mu­ni­ties they served. Con­trac­tors earned no more than $23,000 per month, de­pend­ing on at­ten­dance. Field of­fi­cers earned $7,300, plus an $11,000 trav­el al­lowance and $300 month­ly phone al­lowance. Re­gion­al co­or­di­na­tors earned $10,000 and were as­signed com­pa­ny ve­hi­cles main­tained by CEPEP.

Guardian Me­dia sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion from Min­is­ter Ameen on how the new pro­gramme sub­stan­tive­ly dif­fers from CEPEP, but re­peat­ed calls went unan­swered.

De­spite un­cer­tain­ty, chair­men of gov­ern­ment-run cor­po­ra­tions say the ad­di­tion­al man­pow­er will ease pres­sure on over­stretched lo­cal au­thor­i­ties.

Pe­nal-Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj said, “This will def­i­nite­ly ben­e­fit the work that we are do­ing be­cause it is ad­di­tion­al hands. And we need that, of course, es­pe­cial­ly for pub­lic spaces.”

Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gowrie Roop­nar­ine echoed that view, say­ing, “Since the clo­sure of CEPEP, schools were com­ing to the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion ask­ing for help. So, now, this pro­gramme will be able to as­sist there.”

But Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment deputy po­lit­i­cal leader and at­tor­ney-at-law San­jiv Bood­hu warned the gov­ern­ment could be ex­pos­ing it­self to le­gal li­a­bil­i­ty.

“From the mo­ment you de­cide who qual­i­fies and who does not, and link it to whether they worked for CEPEP be­fore, you are ex­pos­ing your­self to lit­i­ga­tion and li­a­bil­i­ty. That is a clear case of dis­crim­i­nat­ing against a cer­tain class of peo­ple in so­ci­ety,” Bood­hu said.

Op­po­si­tion-led cor­po­ra­tions al­so raised con­cerns about scale. Tu­na­puna–Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Josi­ah Austin de­scribed the pro­pos­al as “gross­ly in­ad­e­quate” for a re­gion of its size, call­ing for a re­assess­ment of man­pow­er and fund­ing.

Diego Mar­tin May­or Akeilah Glas­gow-Warn­er said in a Face­book post that the bor­ough has been in­un­dat­ed with calls about po­ten­tial em­ploy­ment but stressed that hir­ing de­ci­sions rest sole­ly with the min­istry. She not­ed that Diego Mar­tin cur­rent­ly has just one team of 12 work­ers.

While Min­is­ter Ameen has not pub­licly re­spond­ed to the crit­i­cism, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der said dis­missed CEPEP, Re­for­esta­tion, and Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) work­ers would be re­hired un­der the new arrange­ments.

“All of the 30, 40, 50, 60, 70,000 peo­ple that the PNM keep talk­ing about be­ing out of work—all of them are go­ing to be gain­ful­ly em­ployed. But with­out PNM min­is­ters and Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment us­ing the pro­gramme to steal mon­ey,” Alexan­der said.