Kali­fa Clyne

One day af­ter chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of state-owned me­dia com­pa­ny Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG), Ken Ali, and ra­dio talk show host Mar­cia Brave­boy were fired from their post, two oth­er se­nior em­ploy­ees, who were al­so fac­ing the axe, ten­dered their res­ig­na­tions.

New­ly ap­point­ed In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards, who served as pro­gramme di­rec­tor for CTV, and his col­league ex­ec­u­tive news pro­duc­er Lar­ry Lums­den yes­ter­day sub­mit­ted res­ig­na­tion let­ters to the board.

Lums­den con­firmed his res­ig­na­tion and said he felt his time had come to leave the net­work.

He said that his de­ci­sion had come af­ter see­ing a re­port in this news­pa­per yes­ter­day, which in­di­cat­ed that oth­er se­nior em­ploy­ees at the tele­vi­sion sta­tion would have their em­ploy­ment con­tracts ter­mi­nat­ed.

"I re­port­ed to work as usu­al to­day and left the of­fice at noon. I don't know how long I will con­tin­ue. That will be up to the board but I have giv­en them my res­ig­na­tion let­ter," Lums­den said.

He did not cite any spe­cif­ic rea­sons for his de­ci­sion, oth­er than the Guardian re­port, but said it was time for him to move on.

"I have sev­er­al op­por­tu­ni­ties I am con­sid­er­ing at the mo­ment. I have no re­grets in part­ing at all."

Richards did not an­swer sev­er­al calls to his mo­bile phone yes­ter­day.

He al­so did not re­spond to a text mes­sage.

In an in­ter­view short­ly af­ter his ap­point­ment as an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, Richards said he would not be re­sign­ing his po­si­tion at CN­MG be­cause he was not re­quired to do so.

CN­MG's re­cent­ly fired CEO Ken Ali said at the time there were no plans to re­move Richards from his po­si­tion "be­cause he is a ma­jor as­set."

Yes­ter­day, chair­man of CN­MG and Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Ltd (GISL), He­len Dray­ton, re­fused to dis­cuss the res­ig­na­tions.

She stat­ed that in ac­cor­dance with pro­fes­sion­al ethics, the board would not dis­cuss the af­fairs of present, for­mer or past em­ploy­ees of the or­gan­i­sa­tions.

"We will not dis­cuss em­ploy­ee mat­ters with a third par­ty," Dray­ton said in a brief tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion.

Em­ploy­ees at the state-owned tele­vi­sion sta­tion have ex­pressed anx­i­ety at the changes tak­ing place in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

One em­ploy­ee said there were dis­cus­sions around the com­pa­ny that the State planned to close down the tele­vi­sion sta­tion.

These con­ver­sa­tions were fu­elled fur­ther by an­oth­er news re­port in yes­ter­day's Guardian in which Dray­ton spoke about po­ten­tial re­trench­ment at CN­MG and GISL in re­la­tion to the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate.

"We have se­nior man­agers telling peo­ple to look for new jobs be­cause the new Gov­ern­ment plans to close down the sta­tion," said the em­ploy­ee.

"Peo­ple are very con­cerned, es­pe­cial­ly the free­lancers who feel they would be the first to go."

A mem­ber of the news­room said the opin­ions in that de­part­ment were di­vid­ed.

"If I'm not bought out, I look for­ward to work­ing in a re­al news­room again, a news­room de­void of all the po­lit­i­cal in­volve­ment," said one jour­nal­ist, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

"Hon­est­ly, I'm not wor­ried. I know that I did noth­ing wrong in that my jour­nal­is­tic in­tegri­ty can­not be ques­tioned.

"I was vic­timised in more ways than one be­cause I re­fused to be used in their 'push the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship cam­paign' be­fore the elec­tion."

In ad­di­tion to the changes at CN­MG, the Gov­ern­ment has al­lowed the con­tract for the In­te­grat­ed Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Out­reach Net­work (ICON) project, de­vel­oped un­der for­mer com­mu­ni­ca­tions min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath, to ex­pire.

The con­tract for the $50 mil­lion project ex­pired last week and an au­dit has been or­dered to de­ter­mine how the mon­ey was spent. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Max­ie Cuffie said last week that the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion had no in­ter­est in re­new­ing or go­ing back to the project.