The Board of Di­rec­tors of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) yes­ter­day an­nounced the ap­point­ment of Ronald Wal­cott as the new CEO of the com­pa­ny to take place with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease yes­ter­day, Wal­cott was the com­pa­ny's for­mer ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of Mo­bile Ser­vices and Op­er­a­tions and re­places the for­mer act­ing CEO George Hill who has been in­stru­men­tal in steer­ing the com­pa­ny through the im­ple­men­ta­tion of its cur­rent strate­gic busi­ness plan.

Wal­cott is the hold­er of an MBA (spe­cial­is­ing in fi­nan­cial man­age­ment) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bed­ford­shire (UK) and is a doc­tor­al can­di­date fi­nal­is­ing his dis­ser­ta­tion on fi­nan­cial man­age­ment at North Cen­tral Uni­ver­si­ty (USA).

"Fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment Mr Wal­cott ex­pressed his ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the role for­mer act­ing CEO George Hill played in TSTT and has com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing the con­tin­ued growth of the or­gan­i­sa­tion through the suc­cess­ful man­age­ment of the Com­pa­ny to­wards greater val­ue for share­hold­ers," the state­ment said.The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers' Union (CWU), in a state­ment yes­ter­day, ex­pressed "grave con­cerns" over Wal­cott's ap­point­ment.

"This ap­point­ment and the sud­den ac­cep­tance of the res­ig­na­tion of the act­ing CEO George Hill comes at a very crit­i­cal time for the com­pa­ny. TSTT is in the midst of a bat­tle waged by Ca­ble and Wire­less who from all in­di­ca­tions are sup­port­ed by Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T in their quest for a third mo­bile li­cence to com­pete with them­selves as 49 per cent share­hold­ers in TSTT," the re­lease said.

The CWU al­so said it was sur­pris­ing that the "front man" who had been push­ing for or­gan­i­sa­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion in TSTT had found him­self in a po­si­tion where he now has to un­der­go his own per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion.The re­lease claimed the ap­point­ment was po­lit­i­cal and or­ders came from the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment.