Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

The chair­man of the Na­tion­al Schools Di­etary Ser­vices Ltd (NS­D­SL)-Dawn An­na­muntho­do-has been fired. An­na­muntho­do's ap­point­ment was re­voked with im­me­di­ate ef­fect on Au­gust 4. The de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate her ap­point­ment was tak­en by Cab­i­net, just six months af­ter she was ap­point­ed to head the school-feed­ing pro­gramme. The ter­mi­na­tion fol­lowed al­le­ga­tions of a $50,000-plus VIP se­cu­ri­ty bill and at­tempts to be­come a sig­na­to­ry on the com­pa­ny's ac­count, ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian. An­na­muntho­do's dis­missal fol­lows the res­ig­na­tion of two of the NS­D­SL's board di­rec­tors-Rev Subesh Ram­jat­tan and Van­dan­na Pra­jap­at. The board wrote to Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Tim Goopeesingh on May 10, ex­press­ing con­cerns about the mat­ter in­volv­ing An­na­muntho­do. Copies of the three-page cor­re­spon­dence were al­so sent to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and to per­ma­nent sec­re­taries in the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion and Fi­nance-Mau­rice Suite and Mar­lene Ju­man re­spec­tive­ly.

Death threats lead to $50,000-plus se­cu­ri­ty bill

It was fol­low­ing claims of death threats on her life, An­na­muntho­do re­quest­ed that she be giv­en a VIP se­cu­ri­ty de­tail to pro­tect her from harm.

The board agreed to the re­quest for a pe­ri­od of two weeks, com­menc­ing March 18.

• Se­cu­ri­ty firm SESL Ltd was ap­proached to pro­vide the VIP es­cort ser­vice from Mon­day to Fri­day at a dai­ly rate of $1,350 for 12 hours, in­clu­sive of a SUV ve­hi­cle.

• The VIP se­cu­ri­ty de­tail agree­ment com­prised one un­marked SUV, one cer­ti­fied de­fen­sive dri­ver and an armed body­guard.

• The for­mer chair­man caused eye­brows to raise when she re­quest­ed ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices for week­ends. A night se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer was al­so re­tained. The se­cu­ri­ty bill amount­ed to $50,650 for the pe­ri­od March 19 to April 5.

In­grid Her­rera, the NS­D­SL's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, sub­se­quent­ly queried the in­crease in the se­cu­ri­ty rates quot­ed on an in­voice sub­mit­ted by the se­cu­ri­ty firm. Re­spond­ing to the query, the firm's ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Derek Smith ex­plained that the orig­i­nal rates for se­cu­ri­ty ser­vice had not changed. Smith said the firm and NS­D­SL had ini­tial­ly agreed for VIP es­cort from Mon­day to Fri­day. How­ev­er, Smith said up­on fur­ther re­view of her sched­ules, An­na­muntho­do re­quest­ed se­cu­ri­ty on Sat­ur­days and Sun­days. Smith not­ed while the dai­ly rate ap­plies for Sat­ur­days, an ad­di­tion dou­ble rate was cal­cu­lat­ed for Sun­days and pub­lic hol­i­days to­talling $2,700 plus VAT.

Le­gal ad­vice frowned on change in bank­ing pol­i­cy

An­na­muntho­do al­so at­tempt­ed to be­come a sig­na­to­ry on the com­pa­ny's Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd ac­count held at Eller­slie Plaza, Mar­aval. Bank records list Her­rera as the on­ly sig­na­to­ry on the ac­count. At a spe­cial emer­gency board meet­ing held on May 3, An­na­muntho­do-ac­cord­ing to board min­utes-sug­gest­ed a change in the bank­ing pol­i­cy im­ple­ment­ing two sig­na­to­ries to the com­pa­ny's ac­count. While it was not­ed that the pre­vi­ous board moved to im­ple­ment the rel­e­vant poli­cies if such a change was need­ed, a de­ci­sion was tak­en by the new board to re­fer the mat­ter to the Au­dit Com­mit­tee, pend­ing a rec­om­men­da­tion at the next board meet­ing. Doc­u­ments ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian showed that le­gal ad­vice was sought by the com­pa­ny's in­ter­im cor­po­rate sec­re­tary, at­tor­ney Ron­nie Bisses­sar. Bisses­sar not­ed that An­na­muntho­do was a non-ex­ec­u­tive chair­man and it would be im­prop­er for her or any oth­er board mem­ber to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions and be ap­point­ed as co-sig­na­to­ries of the com­pa­ny's ac­count.

He al­so stat­ed that the pro­pos­al for change of the bank­ing pol­i­cy was in con­trast of the com­pa­ny's by -laws and in­con­sis­tent with the gen­er­al prin­ci­ple that the CEO is the chief ac­count­ing of­fi­cer of the com­pa­ny. A let­ter from Her­rera to An­na­muntho­do stat­ed that the for­mer chair­man had vis­it­ed the bank, telling them of a board de­ci­sion tak­en to change the bank­ing pol­i­cy. The bank had re­quest­ed copies of the new di­rec­tor­ship of NS­D­SL and a signed copy of the spe­cial res­o­lu­tion for the new bank­ing pol­i­cy to be im­ple­ment­ed from An­na­muntho­do. They nev­er re­ceived the doc­u­ments. The bank lat­er con­tact­ed Her­rera, re­quest­ing the rel­e­vant doc­u­men­ta­tion to make the nec­es­sary changes to the ac­count.

Du­mas: Take a page from Pres­i­dent Oba­ma

For­mer head of the T&T Pub­lic Ser­vice, Regi­nald Du­mas, said there was need for a prop­er cri­te­ria to be im­ple­ment­ed to avoid such a re­cur­rence. Du­mas said the prob­lem T&T faces was that when a gov­ern­ment was elect­ed, peo­ple were cho­sen for po­si­tions based on po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion rather than qual­i­fi­ca­tions. "We have cho­sen peo­ple over the years on the ba­sis of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion; peo­ple who have worked for a po­lit­i­cal par­ty or friend­ly with a po­lit­i­cal par­ty. We do not look at qual­i­fi­ca­tions and cri­te­ria, so over the years we have end­ed up with a lot of square pegs in round holes. "I think what is need­ed is for us to take a page from US Pres­i­dent Bar­rack Oba­ma and im­ple­ment a ques­tion­naire when po­si­tions are be­ing filled. The ques­tion­naire must state whether you are re­lat­ed to a gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial and your ex­per­tise," Du­mas said.

An­na­muntho­do: These ques­tions are state busi­ness

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, An­na­muntho­do ques­tioned how the Sun­day Guardian ob­tained the doc­u­ments.

"How did you get hold of those doc­u­ments? Those are state doc­u­ments." Asked whether se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices were hired on week­ends and if the board ap­proved this, An­na­muntho­do replied: "These ques­tions are state busi­ness. I will call you back. I have to an­swer to your ques­tions, I would call back in the next two hours." How­ev­er, when An­na­muntho­do re­turned the call she asked for the ques­tions to be e-mailed to give a writ­ten re­sponse at a lat­er date.