The Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Khadi­jah Ameen, says con­trary to so­cial me­dia re­ports on a leaked Cab­i­net Note, the new Na­tion­al Pro­gramme for the Up­keep of Pub­lic Spaces is not a CEPEP re­place­ment.

In a state­ment is­sued late Thurs­day evening, Min­is­ter Ameen con­firmed a new pro­gramme had been launched to up­keep com­mu­ni­ty spaces but ex­plained it, “Is a fresh, re­sults-dri­ven ini­tia­tive de­signed to strength­en man­pow­er at Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions, pay a de­cent wage, and op­er­ate with­out po­lit­i­cal mid­dle­men, pa­tron­age, or crim­i­nal el­e­ments, as was as­so­ci­at­ed with CEPEP.”

Yes­ter­day, a copy of a doc­u­ment pur­port­ed to be a leaked Cab­i­net Note showed a new pro­gramme meant to em­ploy cit­i­zens and main­tain com­mu­ni­ty spaces be­ing tout­ed as a re­place­ment to the now de­funct Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme. At the end of June, all 300-plus con­trac­tors were ter­mi­nat­ed, which re­sult­ed in an es­ti­mat­ed 10,000 work­ers they had hired be­ing left with­out jobs.