Government will not be cutting the salaries of the Community-based Environmental, Protection, and Enhancement Company Ltd (CEPEP) employees.
So said Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowley.
Addressing the nation during the Covid19 media briefing at the Diplomatic Centre on Saturday, he said, for the period that they are home during the COVID-19 pandemic, they will receive two-thirds of their salary, but it will be in the form of a grant.
The PM added “So what they are getting is not 3/4 of their salary. It was not put to you properly. It is not a cut in salary. It is that the programme has been shut down as we don’t want them out there. While the programme has been shut down, they get a grant.”
He said “If we had shut the programme down and say ok, let them go to the social support ministry for the grants, all that would have done is send 10,000 people to the ministry to create more problems. We know who those people are as we have them in a programme. So they are getting their grants through that programme.”
The PM’s clarification follows a release by CEPEP on Friday, which stated that a decision was taken to reduce the period of work to four hours per day, reduce the teams’ by 50 per cent so that each worker will work two days a week and their salaries will be reduced by 33.3 per cent.
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