No toilets for CEPEP workers

CEPEP General Manager, Keith Eddy, replied that on major projects CEPEP provides portable toilet facilities on a truck but it was the responsibility of the individual contractors to ensure toilet facilities for their gangs of workers. However Gopeesingh, who was backed up by former House Speaker Wade Mark, the chairman of the committee, rejected that explanation and said the responsibility belonged with CEPEP to ensure that its contractors were providing the facilities to the workers.

Committee member Shamfa Cudjoe said that earlier in the year it had been discovered that more than 80 percent of the CEPEP contractors were behind on making statutory payments including payments to the National Insurance Board (NIB) on behalf of the workers.

She asked whether that situation had been corrected.

Eddy said some of the contractors were still owing significant sums of money. He said the contract between CEPEP and the contractors stated that if they missed three consecutive payments they were deemed to be non-compliant and their management fees would be withheld. He said when the current management came into office some five months ago it found the situation, adding that if the previous management had followed the contract, the offending contractors would have been removed from the programme.

However, he said CEPEP had held talks with the NIB and about half the offending contractors were now compliant.

Mark asked if the contractors paid tax, but CEPEP’s Finance Manager, Jody David said the payment of tax was outside of CEPEP’s arrangement with the contractors and they were responsible for this. However, Mark asked Eddy to look into the issue of whether the contractors are paying tax as they are supposed to, saying he wanted to know if they were fulfilling their responsibilities.

He also asked Eddy what he planned to do about the approximately 70 “rogue” contractors who remained non-compliant in terms of their statutory payments, asking whether their contracts should be terminated. Eddy said the company has sought legal advice on the issue.

Eddy said CEPEP is being returned to its original mandate to build entrepreneurs, and contractors would be “graduated” from the programme after three years. He added that CEPEP’s mandate is to ensure that the contractors are trained and become business people at the end of their three-year stint in the programme although he admitted that the company has not yet officially informed the “core” contractors that it is going back to its original mandate - the “core” contractors were identified as those who had been in CEPEP for more than the intended three years.