Dar­ren Ba­haw

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the state-owned me­dia com­pa­ny Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG), Ken Ali, one of the main ar­chi­tects be­hind the pri­vate­ly fund­ed pro-Op­po­si­tion week­ly news­pa­per, The Voice, has been sacked from his job.

A let­ter, signed by com­pa­ny chair­man and for­mer In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor He­len Dray­ton, ter­mi­nat­ed his con­tract with im­me­di­ate ef­fect yes­ter­day, hours be­fore Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert be­gan de­liv­ery of the 2015-2016 bud­get in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

The move came a day af­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Max­ie Cuffie told re­gion­al jour­nal­ists at the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Me­dia Work­ers' eighth bi­en­ni­al gen­er­al as­sem­bly that $90 mil­lion had been spent by CN­MG and oth­er state-run me­dia en­ti­ties over the last year.

In­formed sources said yes­ter­day an au­dit in­to the com­pa­ny is like­ly to be launched to ex­am­ine how that mon­ey was spent. One of the projects un­der re­view will be Project Icon, which had a bud­get of $50 mil­lion.

At his ap­point­ment a month ago, Cuffie said the time had come to re­vis­it the Gov­ern­ment's role in man­ag­ing me­dia hous­es and said his mis­sion was to find a way to in­su­late the me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tions from po­lit­i­cal con­trol.

Last month, two oth­er ex­ec­u­tives of the state-owned Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Ltd (GISL), chair­man Tony Deyal and CEO Andy John­son were al­so axed.

Deyal had been the cre­ator of the "Voic­es" project and "Your Gov­ern­ment Work­ing for You" ads, which had been crit­i­cised by the then Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment.

An­oth­er ca­su­al­ty yes­ter­day was free­lance ra­dio talk show host Mar­cia Brave­boy, who had a pro­gramme on Talk City 91.1 FM. She too was served with a let­ter ter­mi­nat­ing her con­tract with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. Her last six-month con­tract was signed on Ju­ly 10.

In re­sponse, Brave­boy, who earned $10,000 a month, took to Face­book to ex­press her dis­plea­sure.

Ali, a vet­er­an news­pa­per jour­nal­ist joined CN­MG in 2010 and his lat­est two-year con­tract was signed on Au­gust 1, 2014. He earned $40,000 a month with use of a ful­ly main­tained com­pa­ny ve­hi­cle and cel­lu­lar phone. He was al­so en­ti­tled to a $3,000 en­ter­tain­ment al­lowance.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands his con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed un­der a clause which re­ferred to his un­sat­is­fac­to­ry per­for­mance against his agreed Key Per­for­mance In­di­ca­tors (KPI).

In the com­ing days oth­er staff are ex­pect­ed to be fired, in­clud­ing an ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er in the news and cur­rent af­fairs de­part­ment who fea­tured promi­nent­ly dur­ing the live broad­casts of the PP's elec­tion cam­paign and an­oth­er high-pro­file talk show host, sources said.