GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

TSTT’s re­volv­ing door at the top has trig­gered alarms for the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU).

De­spite pledg­ing full sup­port to in­com­ing act­ing CEO Reza Ho­sein, the union crit­i­cised the lack of trans­paren­cy sur­round­ing for­mer chief Keino Cox’s abrupt de­par­ture, con­fess­ing it re­mains en­tire­ly un­in­formed about what drove the de­ci­sion.

Ad­dress­ing wide­spread spec­u­la­tion over Cox’s sud­den dis­place­ment, the union’s sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer, at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, ac­knowl­edged that the CWU re­ceived no of­fi­cial clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether the for­mer act­ing CEO was ter­mi­nat­ed, placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave, or sent on va­ca­tion.

“I am not aware that he was ter­mi­nat­ed. As a mat­ter of fact, I can’t speak to that. I have been hear­ing a lot of ru­mours. I heard that he’s on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave. Some­body said he may be on va­ca­tion. I don’t know.

“But what I can say is the man­ner they do things in TSTT is no sur­prise. They use you, abuse you and toss you to the side. So he may have served the agen­da, you know, he came in and he served the agen­da,” Ogeer said.

De­spite man­age­ment’s si­lence on the mat­ter, Ogeer praised Cox’s per­for­mance dur­ing his time at the helm, not­ing that un­der his stew­ard­ship, TSTT achieved its high­est prof­it mar­gins in 17 years.

“He got cer­tain things for them and I be­lieve it was just his time and he be­came ex­pired. I don’t know. But I mean it is not a good im­pres­sion to the pub­lic to see from April 2025 to Au­gust 2026 three CEOs in one com­pa­ny.

“Look at the num­ber of res­ig­na­tions on the board. It is not look­ing good and it speaks to lead­er­ship and I would leave it there,” she added.

Mov­ing past the in­sta­bil­i­ty at the top, Ogeer made it clear that the CWU holds no per­son­al bias against whichev­er ex­ec­u­tive oc­cu­pies the lead­er­ship seat, pro­vid­ed they pri­ori­tise op­er­a­tional sus­tain­abil­i­ty and work­er wel­fare.

“We have no brief with any­one who sits in the chair. We sup­port any­one who sits in the chair who would be able to take TSTT to that place of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and vi­a­bil­i­ty. Keino Cox, we saw dur­ing the time of his act­ing tenure, where he would have moved this com­pa­ny to the high­est prof­it in 17 years and we want to just go on record by thank­ing Mr Cox for that,” she said.

De­scrib­ing Ho­sein as an “hon­est,” high­ly ed­u­cat­ed, and ex­pe­ri­enced leader with whom she main­tains a pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ship, Ogeer ex­pressed con­fi­dence in his pro­fes­sion­al back­ground.

“Mr Reza Ho­sein, who I am high­ly fond of be­cause I have a good re­la­tion­ship with him, you know, he’s a very hon­est per­son and he’s very ed­u­cat­ed and ex­pe­ri­enced and we want to say we sup­port him,” Ogeer added.

She af­firmed that the union’s en­dorse­ment of Ho­sein re­mains con­sis­tent with its past sup­port for pre­vi­ous lead­er­ship fig­ures, in­clud­ing Cox and for­mer CEO Kent West­ern, as long as the fo­cus stays on or­gan­i­sa­tion­al prof­itabil­i­ty.

“We sup­port Mr Ho­sein just as we sup­port­ed Mr Cox, just as we sup­port­ed Mr We­st­on. We don’t take things per­son­al. We look at the in­ter­ests of work­ers and of course the per­son who is tasked to take the com­pa­ny from point A to point B once they re­main poised for prof­itabil­i­ty. That’s the union’s po­si­tion,” Ogeer added.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from TSTT on Tues­day, Ho­sein brings more than 27 years of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ex­pe­ri­ence to the po­si­tion and has held se­nior roles across sev­er­al ar­eas of TSTT, in­clud­ing tech­nol­o­gy, res­i­den­tial ser­vices, wire­less so­lu­tions, con­sumer sales, ser­vice de­liv­ery and as­sur­ance, and cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence and mar­ket­ing.