Akash Sama­roo

The Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) is be­ing ac­cused of de­lib­er­ate­ly leav­ing out a key para­graph from the dis­put­ed 2017 Cab­i­net note in a let­ter to the com­pa­ny’s new chair­man. In the let­ter, he cau­tioned that the board does not have the au­thor­i­ty to uni­lat­er­al­ly re­new mul­ti­ple con­tracts with­out gov­ern­ment ap­proval.

In the let­ter to CEPEP Chair­man Dain Ma­haraj dat­ed Au­gust 11, 2025, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, CEO Kei­th Ed­dy said the dis­put­ed 2017 Cab­i­net note—at the cen­tre of the con­tro­ver­sy over the ex­ten­sion of more than 300 con­tracts—was a one-off di­rec­tive in­tend­ed to put thou­sands on the bread­line, not to set a prece­dent grant­i­ng the board un­re­strict­ed au­thor­i­ty.