For­mer TSTT chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) Lisa Agard has ac­cused her for­mer em­ploy­ers of muz­zling her in the af­ter­math of the 2023 da­ta breach.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee tasked with in­ves­ti­gat­ing the Oc­to­ber 9 oc­cur­rence, Agard said she had to plead with the chair­man Sean Roach and the board for per­mis­sion to com­mu­ni­cate with mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Re­fer­ring to her sub­mis­sion to the JSC last month, Agard said, “When you look at the de­tails of my sub­mis­sion, you have to ask your­self why did the CEO have to lit­er­al­ly beg the chair­man and the board of TSTT to be al­lowed to com­mu­ni­cate with the pub­lic af­ter No­vem­ber 6? Since by that date, I was man­dat­ed to get pri­or ap­proval of chair­man and the board be­fore any­thing was al­lowed to be said.”

Agard said a com­pre­hen­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tion plan was pre­pared to in­form af­fect­ed cus­tomers who were seg­ment­ed in­to var­i­ous mar­kets but that was not what was even­tu­al­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed.

“The board on­ly ap­proved com­mu­ni­ca­tion to every­one ex­cept the gen­er­al pub­lic, claim­ing it would strain the re­sources of the con­tact cen­tre. In any event, no as­pect of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion plan was ever im­ple­ment­ed, why is that?” Agard asked the JSC.

Agard said she be­lieved that would have al­layed the fears of the pub­lic.

She said it was, there­fore, disin­gen­u­ous of the cur­rent TSTT board to tell the pub­lic that it need­ed to re­shape its com­mu­ni­ca­tion mech­a­nism.

“If, as TSTT now claims, it wish­es to be trans­par­ent and time­ly with its com­mu­ni­ca­tions to cus­tomers, then why was the com­mu­ni­ca­tion plan to the gen­er­al pub­lic not im­ple­ment­ed?” the for­mer CEO asked again.

She added that the board even re­fused a state­ment she pre­pared to clar­i­fy what she called the “mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion” made by Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les in the Par­lia­ment on No­vem­ber 1.

“That went to the board and the board re­fused to ap­prove its pub­lic re­lease,” Agard told the JSC mem­bers.

Agard added that she was al­so per­plexed that the cur­rent TSTT ex­ec­u­tive stat­ed be­fore the JSC last month that com­mu­ni­ca­tions were not time­ly and ac­cu­rate.

Agard chal­lenged the crit­i­cism lev­elled against her by TSTT that she mis­han­dled the com­mu­ni­ca­tion as­pect of the cri­sis. She said with re­spect to the man­age­ment of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, there was an in­ter-de­part­ment dai­ly call fol­low­ing the cy­ber­at­tack where they dealt with com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy.

“On that dai­ly call, was Mr Khamal Georges, who heads the rep­u­ta­tion­al brand team in TSTT, and his pur­pose for be­ing on those dai­ly calls was to ad­vise the com­pa­ny that hav­ing re­gard to the up­dates giv­en by the net­works and IT team, whether we should com­mu­ni­cate any­thing to the pub­lic,” Agard said.

“Based on that ad­vice, you would see the chronol­o­gy of pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion that went out. So, I was very per­plexed and tak­en aback by the con­tri­bu­tions be­ing made by Mr Georges, who re­ports to Mr Ger­ard Coop­er, who is the gen­er­al man­ag­er of Net­works and Ad­min, to hear them say af­ter the fact that com­mu­ni­ca­tion was not time­ly, ac­cu­rate and we should have done a bet­ter job.”

She added, “I was the one who in­sist­ed on prepar­ing an apol­o­gy to cus­tomers, that came from me, be­cause I want­ed them to un­der­stand that we un­der­stand their frus­tra­tion, and to com­mu­ni­cate ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion and to apol­o­gise to them that their da­ta was stolen by cy­ber crim­i­nals. So, there is no ques­tion on there be­ing a lack of ac­tion on my part.”

On Jan­u­ary 22, TSTT chair­man Roach, act­ing CEO Kent West­ern, se­nior man­ag­er of IT In­fra­struc­ture Tanya Muller and oth­er ex­ec­u­tives ap­peared be­fore the JSC, which was tasked with in­ves­ti­gat­ing the man­age­ment of the cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty breach of da­ta be­fore, dur­ing and af­ter the oc­cur­rence.

Dur­ing that sit­ting, West­ern im­plied that Agard, who was fired in No­vem­ber in a fall­out from her han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion, may have mis­led Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Gon­za­les on the da­ta breach, since all the com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the min­is­ter em­anat­ed from her of­fice as CEO.

Agard sub­se­quent­ly de­nied this claim and was brought be­fore yes­ter­day’s JSC to an­swer to those al­le­ga­tions and pro­vide her side of the sto­ry.