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Saturday, February 15, 2025

Wendy faces e-Teck axe

by

20110416

Al­most 13 years af­ter Miss T&T Uni­verse 1998 Wendy Fitzwilliam made this coun­try proud, the beau­ty queen is set to be sacked from her gov­ern­ment job.Fitzwilliam, 38, is the vice pres­i­dent (VP) of In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tions Di­vi­sion at Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (e-Teck).The com­pa­ny formed part of for­mer prime min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning's brain child Vi­sion 20/20 plan.It was aimed at be­com­ing a sig­nif­i­cant part­ner in the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of T&T by di­ver­si­fy­ing the coun­try's non en­er­gy sec­tor and ex­port base.

The moth­er of one is among the ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers that are ex­pect­ed to be re­placed with­in the up­com­ing weeks.Sun­day Guardian learnt the re­cruit­ment process forms part of the re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise the state en­ter­prise is said to be un­der­go­ing to chart the way for­ward.The Diego Mar­tin beau­ty queen has been em­ployed at the com­pa­ny since her re­turn to Trinidad in 2003, af­ter win­ning the pres­ti­gious ti­tle. Her con­tract ex­pires in De­cem­ber 2012. It was a proud day in his­to­ry on June 1, 1998, when Fitzwilliam won the ti­tle.Her win came 21 years af­ter Janelle Pen­ny Com­mis­siong cap­tured the pres­ti­gious ti­tle for T&T.Up un­til Thurs­day, the com­pa­ny's Web site list­ed the man­age­ment team com­pris­ing four mem­bers.

• Chief Im­ple­men­ta­tion of­fi­cer, Tamana Op­er­a­tions-Bernard Mitchell.

• VP In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Di­vi­sion–Wendy Fitzwilliam.

• VP Prop­er­ty man­age­ment-Nisha Kochar.

• Gen­er­al man­ag­er, ICT Project Im­ple­men­ta­tion–Hen­ry Ku­mar.

How­ev­er, while the re­cruit­ment dri­ve is said to be part of a re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise, ques­tions have sur­faced as to why the po­si­tions of on­ly three ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers were ad­ver­tised in a dai­ly news­pa­per two months ago.In­ter­est­ed ap­pli­cants were asked to sub­mit ap­pli­ca­tions for the fol­low­ing po­si­tions now un­der new job ti­tles-VP Cor­po­rate Sup­port Ser­vices, VP In­vestor Sourc­ing Fa­cil­i­ta­tion and VP De­vel­op­ment Plan­ning and Man­age­ment.Suit­able ap­pli­cants were al­so asked to sub­mit the rel­e­vant qual­i­fi­ca­tion to fill the post of pres­i­dent at the com­pa­ny.The ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tion, how­ev­er, for­mer­ly filled by Kochar was not among the va­can­cies ad­ver­tised.And, sources re­vealed to Sun­day Guardian, the ex­ec­u­tive ten­dered her res­ig­na­tion last Fri­day. Checks on the com­pa­ny's Web site yes­ter­day re­vealed that Kochar's port­fo­lio was al­so re­moved.

Fitzwilliam con­firms

When con­tact­ed last week, a free spir­it­ed Fitzwilliam con­firmed that the po­si­tion she cur­rent­ly holds at e-Teck was ad­ver­tised. Asked if she was giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re-ap­ply, the beau­ty replied: "No." "We were told it is a re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise. I am just ob­serv­ing and look­ing on. I am wait­ing to see what is go­ing to tran­spire. I am con­tin­u­ing to work as nor­mal un­til oth­er­wise."The beau­ty, who al­so holds a LLB and was ad­mit­ted to the Bar in 2000, how­ev­er, sug­gest­ed that a pol­i­cy de­ci­sion should be tak­en re­gard­ing re­cruit­ment at state en­ter­pris­es.

"The per­for­mance of none of the ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers were called in­to ques­tion. Nor­mal­ly be­fore po­si­tions are ad­ver­tised, in­ter­views are con­duct­ed in­ter­nal­ly. I am of the view that some pol­i­cy de­ci­sions should be put in­to place re­gard­ing state en­ter­pris­es to en­sure that such ac­tions do not come across ar­bi­trary," the for­mer beau­ty queen said.

Cadiz de­fends re­struc­tur­ing process

De­fend­ing the de­ci­sion to re­cruit new staff, line min­is­ter for e-Teck Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Stephen Cadiz said de­ci­sions were tak­en based on eval­u­a­tions."Eval­u­a­tions were con­duct­ed and if it was felt peo­ple were not suit­ed for the po­si­tion, the posts were ad­ver­tised. From what I un­der­stand the com­pa­ny that was hired to deal with re­cruit­ment has al­most com­plet­ed the job."We ad­ver­tised for a num­ber of se­nior ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions and cre­at­ed some new po­si­tions be­cause when we came in­to of­fice there was a num­ber of things that had to be done. There were huge cost over­runs and we had to do a com­plete re­or­gan­i­sa­tion."Cadiz, how­ev­er, de­nied al­le­ga­tions that ex­ist­ing staff was not giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re-ap­ply for jobs.


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