Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal re­porter

The terms and con­di­tions of the new CEO of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny, Erik Kesku­la, in­clude a base salary of $180,000 per month plus var­i­ous oth­er cash and non-cash ben­e­fits.

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley gave the in­for­ma­tion in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day as well oth­er as­pects of the to­tal com­pen­sa­tion pack­age of­fered to the CEO:

• Base salary - $180,000 month­ly.

• Re­lo­ca­tion al­lowance- 7 per cent - $12,600 a month;

• Com­ple­tion bonus of -$180,000 payable at the end of the six-month pro­ba­tion.

• Non cash ben­e­fits in­clude val­ue of hous­ing up to US$5,000 a month; a ve­hi­cle main­tained by Her­itage dur­ing pro­ba­tion, and sub­se­quent to that ve­hi­cle pur­chase at val­ue up to $700,000; util­i­ties to be sup­port­ed by the com­pa­ny; re­turn air­fare to their home coun­try at the end for em­ploy­ee and spouse; in­ter­na­tion­al med­ical in­sur­ance for em­ploy­ee/spouse and two de­pen­dents; in­ter­na­tion­al life in­sur­ance for the em­ploy­ee on­ly and 20 work­ing days an­nu­al va­ca­tion.

There is al­so an an­nu­al bonus arrange­ment to be dis­cussed with Her­itage by Kesku­la, who was an­nounced as the com­pa­ny’s in­com­ing CEO on Mon­day.

Row­ley not­ed that UNC MP Rudy In­dars­ingh, in his ques­tion, had fi­nal­ly ac­knowl­edged that the re­struc­tur­ing of Petrotrin had re­sult­ed from it go­ing from bil­lions of dol­lars in loss­es to Her­itage mak­ing an af­ter-tax prof­it of $1.1 bil­lion.

Row­ley said Her­itage is deal­ing with aged in­her­it­ed in­fra­struc­ture and it has a pro­gramme of as­sess­ing that in­fra­struc­ture “which is aged and some of it even dan­ger­ous.”

He said Her­itage re­cent­ly spent $9 mil­lion on an in­spec­tion pro­gramme. On change­out of cer­tain as­pects of the pipeline struc­ture, Her­itage is cur­rent­ly spend­ing $15 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

Row­ley al­so said Gov­ern­ment is not seek­ing a buy­er for Caribbean Dock­yard and En­gi­neer­ing Ser­vices Ltd (Cari­doc) as the role it can play is very im­por­tant to TT’s di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­fort in ma­rine tech­nol­o­gy.

Gov­ern­ment has ap­point­ed a com­pe­tent qual­i­fied group of cit­i­zens to form Cari­doc’s board.

“They’re cur­rent­ly as­sess­ing its needs in the con­text of the na­tion­al econ­o­my,” he added.

In the in­ter­im, Cab­i­net has au­tho­rised the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co) to pro­cure an ap­pro­pri­ate float­ing dry dock for the com­pa­ny to ser­vice all na­tion­al ma­rine as­sets in­clud­ing fer­ries, Coast Guard ves­sels and oth­er com­mer­cial re­quire­ments.

Row­ley said af­ter the old dry dock sank in place last year, he said there is now ef­forts to restart the dry dock­ing process in Ch­aguara­mas. Nid­co has is­sued a re­quest for pro­pos­als and is await­ing re­spons­es.

On oth­er queries Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties for which Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL) pro­vid­ed fi­nan­cial sup­port and the dol­lar val­ue of each are as fol­lows:

(a) Trinidad & To­ba­go Car­ni­val – Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion in the amount of $250,000; and

(b) Machel 40 One Show in the amount of $1,275,000.