Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Four days af­ter al­le­ga­tions of im­pro­pri­ety at the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Namde­v­co) sur­faced, the state board has been sacked. Sources told T&T Guardian that line min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj met with chair­man Robert Ram­samooj and some of the board mem­bers on Thurs­day and thanked them for their ser­vices.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj on­ly said, "I made a cer­tain rec­om­men­da­tion to Cab­i­net about the board of Namde­v­co. I am not al­lowed to dis­close it at this time. "The board has is­sues." The T&T Guardian has pub­lished a se­ries of ex­clu­sive ar­ti­cles high­light­ing ques­tion­able prac­tices at the state en­ter­prise.

Among them are ir­reg­u­lar hir­ing prac­tices that have land­ed five board mem­bers be­fore the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. The hir­ing of CEO Kr­ish­na Ram­rat­tan has al­so come un­der scruti­ny. Ram­rat­tan eval­u­at­ed con­sul­tan­cy pro­pos­als sub­mit­ted for the ex­ec­u­tive re­cruit­ment process-in­clud­ing the po­si­tion he now holds.

The pro­pos­als were then sub­mit­ted to Ram­samooj in an e-mail. Ram­samooj, who formed part of the in­ter­view pan­el, told T&T Guardian he did not know Ram­rat­tan pre­vi­ous­ly. Se­ri­ous ques­tions were al­so raised about the man­ner in which M&M In­sur­ance Bro­kers-the com­pa­ny se­lect­ed to pro­vide cov­er­age for $60 mil­lion worth of as­sets-was side­lined and re­placed by 21st Cen­tu­ry In­sur­ance and Rein­sur­ance Bro­kers.

The con­tract is to pro­vide cov­er­age for the state com­pa­ny's fleet of ve­hi­cles and oth­er as­sets, in­clud­ing the South­ern Whole­sale Mar­ket at Ma­coya, Or­ange Val­ley Whole­sale Fish Mar­ket, Port-of-Spain Whole­sale Fish Mar­ket, Va­len­cia Farm­ers Re­tail Fa­cil­i­ty and the Pi­ar­co Pack­ing­house Fa­cil­i­ty.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed M&M In­sur­ance Bro­kers topped the eval­u­a­tion process and was award­ed 80.75 per cent. How­ev­er, for rea­sons un­known, the con­tract was award­ed to 21st Cen­tu­ry In­sur­ance and Rein­sur­ance Bro­kers.

The in­sur­ance com­pa­ny has al­so been hold­ing talks with Namde­v­co to im­ple­ment a state en­ter­pris­es med­ical plan (SEMP), con­trary to a Cab­i­net de­ci­sion to ap­prove Risk Man­age­ment Ser­vices (RMS) for the job. Cab­i­net Minute No 296 dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 2, 2010, gave ap­proval for 210 staff mem­bers of Namde­v­co to take part in a med­ical plan bro­kered by RMS.

No of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence was sent to RMS in­form­ing them of the switch in bro­kers. How­ev­er, an e-mail was sent to staff stat­ing 21st Cen­tu­ry In­sur­ance and Rein­sur­ance Bro­kers Ltd, a com­pa­ny owned by Wayne Go­sine, was the new bro­ker. In re­sponse to the ar­ti­cle pub­lished on Thurs­day, Go­sine, in a press re­lease, stat­ed, "We went through all the cor­rect and le­gal pro­ce­dures when ap­ply­ing for the con­tract at Namde­v­co."

Go­sine said his com­pa­ny was se­lect­ed for the con­tract on the ba­sis of its record. The re­lease fur­ther stat­ed: "Our ap­point­ment this year was a nat­ur­al tran­si­tion be­ing the in­cum­bent bro­ker hav­ing pro­vid­ed an A-class ser­vice through­out the years.

"Should there be any mis­giv­ing that this con­tract was award­ed un­der the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment, let me cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly state 21st Cen­tu­ry In­sur­ance & Rein­sur­ance Bro­kers Ltd has held this con­tract un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for six years. Both com­pa­ny and I have no po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion. The com­pa­ny strives to per­form its du­ties to any cus­tomer, whether it is gov­ern­men­tal or pri­vate sec­tor."

Go­sine al­so raised the is­sue of an in­cor­rect spelling of his name pub­lished in the ar­ti­cle and fail­ure to get his com­ment on is­sues in ques­tion. The T&T Guardian apol­o­gised in Fri­day's pa­per for the mis­spelling of Go­sine's name and that of the chair­man, which was caused by a tech­ni­cal glitch.

When the T&T Guardian con­tact­ed Go­sine yes­ter­day to ask when Namde­v­co had pub­lished an ad invit­ing ten­ders for a new bro­ker, Go­sine replied, "I can­not re­mem­ber. It was pub­lished, and every­body sub­mit­ted bids and we were one of them." Told that Namde­v­co did not put out an ad invit­ing such bids, Go­sine said, "Well, we were in­vit­ed to quote, among oth­er bro­kers. You have em­bar­rassed me and my fam­i­ly. I have a com­pa­ny to run and I have to pro­tect my­self."

Asked for the ten­der doc­u­ment and num­ber that in­vit­ed bids for a new bro­ker, Go­sine said, "I will ask my of­fice to check it. You do your job and I will do mine," be­fore hang­ing up the phone.