SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

The Port-of-Spain city en­gi­neer who was “fired” for non-per­for­mance by a vote of coun­cil­lors last week is still on the job.

This was con­firmed by Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez yes­ter­day as he an­swered queries over whether the coun­cil­lors had the pow­er to fire the pub­lic ser­vant in the first place.

Say­ing the mo­tion tak­en by the coun­cil dur­ing the statu­to­ry meet­ing was done un­der the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion Act of 2190, Mar­tinez said, “I be­lieve the coun­cil would have ap­prised them­selves of the act be­fore bring­ing the mo­tion to re­move any­one. Based on the in­for­ma­tion, I was in­formed the en­gi­neer was not per­form­ing. There were a num­ber of in­frac­tions.”

Mar­tinez said the CEO wrote the en­gi­neer re­gard­ing his per­for­mance man­age­ment and at some point, the coun­cil had to make a de­ci­sion in the in­ter­est of its burgess­es.

“I am sure this mat­ter would have been re­searched and the de­ci­sion tak­en would have been a prop­er de­ci­sion. I know that nor­mal­ly what they would have done, they would have fol­lowed the process, they would seek le­gal coun­sel and they would have been ad­vised as to the di­rec­tion in which we go from here.”

While the en­gi­neer is still on the job, Mar­tinez could not say if the cor­po­ra­tion had dis­patched a let­ter to the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment for the en­gi­neer to be re­placed.

Mar­tinez ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that this was the first time un­der his re­mit a coun­cil had passed such a mo­tion.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, the en­gi­neer opt­ed not to speak on the is­sue. He di­rect­ed that all ques­tions be re­ferred to his at­tor­ney Sophia Chote SC.

But for­mer Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing yes­ter­day called the act hi­lar­i­ous and wrong.

The mo­tion was moved last Wednes­day by Bel­mont North and West coun­cil­lor Ak­il Durham dur­ing a statu­to­ry meet­ing which was chaired by act­ing May­or Hillan More­an. Durham was one of three coun­cil­lors who raised is­sue with the en­gi­neer, claim­ing he had been fail­ing in his du­ties. More­an said hav­ing lost con­fi­dence in the en­gi­neer, its CEO would write to the min­istry to have him re­placed as soon as pos­si­ble.

But Lee Sing said the ac­tion was “hi­lar­i­ous be­cause they can’t re­al­ly move the city en­gi­neer. When you take an ac­tion it is sup­posed to be im­ple­ment­ed im­me­di­ate­ly. But he is still on the job.”

Lee Sing said the coun­cil’s ac­tion was “wrong” and they had “sul­lied the man’s rep­u­ta­tion.”

If the coun­cil was so ag­griev­ed, Lee Sing said they had the op­tion of seek­ing a meet­ing with the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, the body un­der which the en­gi­neer would have been ap­point­ed.

Un­der his stew­ard­ship, Lee Sing said there were times the cor­po­ra­tion al­so want­ed things done, but due to lack of fund­ing, it had to be left un­at­tend­ed. He said if the cor­po­ra­tion was faced with fi­nan­cial con­straints or de­lay in the re­lease of funds, this could have hin­dered the en­gi­neer’s per­for­mance.