Asha Javeed

A "dif­fer­ence of opin­ion" be­tween chair­man of Evolv­ing Tec­knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (eTeck), Je­w­an Ram­char­i­tar and his line Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz re­sult­ed in Ram­char­i­tar's res­ig­na­tion yes­ter­day."It's no big is­sue. I did it for per­son­al rea­sons. I re­alised I com­mit­ted my­self too wide­ly," Ram­char­i­tar con­firmed to the T&T Guardian.Cadiz said Ram­char­i­tar's res­ig­na­tion was based on a "dif­fer­ence of opin­ion."He did not elab­o­rate.Ram­char­i­tar, cam­paign man­ag­er for Dr Tim Gopeesingh dur­ing the last gen­er­al elec­tions, did not say what were those dif­fer­ences."I am ac­tu­al­ly work­ing on a project in the pub­lic ser­vice are­na on a full-time ba­sis and my time at eTeck is erod­ing the time and at­ten­tion I pay to that," he said.

Just what that project is, he won't say.Ram­char­i­tar, a re­tired part­ner at Price­wa­ter­house Coop­ers (PWC), was ap­point­ed to chair eTeck last No­vem­ber. He chaired his first board meet­ing on No­vem­ber 3, 2010.But de­spite the "con­sid­er­able amount of work" he says that needs to be done at eTeck, he be­lieves that he's left eTeck in good hands."We've just be­gun as­sem­bling a new team. We've ap­point­ed a new pres­i­dent and oth­er ap­point­ments are im­mi­nent," he said.

Un­der Ram­char­i­tar's nine-month stew­ard­ship sev­er­al ex­ec­u­tives re­signed. Among them for­mer act­ing pres­i­dent, Bev­er­ly John, for­mer vice pres­i­dent prop­er­ty man­age­ment, Ne­sha Kochar and for­mer vice pres­i­dent of busines de­vel­op­ment, Wendy Fitzwilliam.The com­pa­ny had first ad­vser­tised for posts, which were al­ready filled, with­out no­tice giv­en to re­spec­tives man­agers. It re­sult­ed in le­gal let­ters be­ing served on be­half of those man­agers.Kelvin Ma­habir, the for­mer deputy chair­man of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT), is now eTeck's pres­i­dent.

Dis­miss­ing as 'ru­mour' a ques­tion as to whether eTeck was about to be shut down, Ram­char­i­tar said the in­sti­tu­tion was "ab­solute­ly vi­tal.""I be­lieve eTeck is vi­able. It's a re­quire­ment to have an in­sti­tu­tion which does in­vest­ment sourc­ing. In­vest­ments are the lifeblood of the econ­o­my," he said.As chair of eTeck, he was charged with over­see­ing the US$25 mil­lion re­fur­bish­ment of the Van­guard Ho­tel in To­ba­go (VHL). He gave the as­sur­ance that the project would be com­plet­ed by its ex­pect­ed No­vem­ber 1 dead­line.

"The funds have been ap­proved. We don't have the cash in hand as yet. But the ex­ec­u­tives have been do­ing all that is re­quired to en­sure that the project will be com­plet­ed on time. The ex­ec­u­tive team and the sup­port staff have been ex­treme­ly dili­gent giv­en the tight time­frame they had to work with," he said. The US$25 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed in the 2011 Bud­get but two months short of a new bud­get, eTeck is now re­ceiv­ing it's al­lot­ment, sources told the Guardian.

The T&T Guardian ob­tained a memo sent to eTeck's ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship team on No­vem­ber 6, 2010 by Ram­char­i­tar.In Ram­char­i­tar's analy­sis of 'eTeck to­day,' it states: "Us­ing the mis­sion, de­liv­er­ables and ini­tia­tives pur­sued and be­ing pur­sued, it ap­pears that eTeck has cre­at­ed lit­tle val­ue to date for T&T, giv­en the sub­stan­tial use of re­sources."

Ram­char­i­tar al­so found fault with "a myr­i­ad of failed or head­ing to fail­ure ini­tia­tives such as: ma­jor ex­pen­di­tures on "In­vest­ment, Pro­mo­tions and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment" but lit­tle val­ue, noth­ing of sig­nif­i­cance can be shown to have been done to di­ver­si­fy the "pro­duc­tion" and "ex­port base" of T&T's non-en­er­gy sec­tor and that "the Van­guard Ho­tel in To­ba­go was ac­quired for a sub­stan­tial sum and has re­quired very sub­stan­tial up­grade in­vest­ment with great un­cer­tain­ty of like­ly val­ue cre­at­ing op­er­a­tion and re­turn.He stat­ed:"eTeck has lost its moor­ings, if it ever had one."

"More en­quiry is need­ed in re­spect to the mat­ters raised but it is un­like­ly the neg­a­tive pic­ture paint­ed will eas­i­ly change," he wrote.A re­sponse memo was sent four days lat­er signed by five ex­ec­u­tives- some for­mer and two still em­ployed- and copied to MTI's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, Carl Fran­cis.The memo con­tained notes which con­sid­er Ram­char­i­tar's con­clu­sions "sub­jec­tive" and stat­ed: "It is the view of the man­age­ment that the con­clu­sion is quite pre­ma­ture with­out a more de­tailed ex­am­i­na­tion of the facts or deep­er in­ter­ac­tion with the mange­ment."At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan is present­ly pur­su­ing civ­il pro­ceed­ings against eTeck's for­mer board.