An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Cor­po­rate sec­re­tary of ma­jor­i­ty state-owned TSTT, Vive­ka Par­gass is seek­ing a re­trac­tion and apol­o­gy from the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) over al­le­ga­tions made pub­licly about her, with her at­tor­ney warn­ing that le­gal ac­tion could fol­low if the union does not re­spond with­in 14 days.

CWU sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer con­firmed yes­ter­day that she re­ceived the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter from TSTT at­tor­ney Saman­tha Singh-Poona, but said the union was with­in its rights to face le­gal ac­tion.

“If they be­lieve they have the right to take ac­tion, that is well with­in their rights, and if they feel that is the av­enue for re­dress, I re­spect that,” Ogeer told Guardian Me­dia.

Ogeer al­so said she had re­ceived a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter from the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Para­dath yes­ter­day and raised con­cerns about pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly the leak­ing of pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters in­to the pub­lic do­main for the court of pub­lic opin­ion to ad­ju­di­cate with­out all the facts.

Singh-Poona’s let­ter, sent to Ogeer yes­ter­day and is­sued on in­struc­tions from at­tor­ney Kent Sam­lal, con­cerns state­ments made by Ogeer dur­ing the CWU’s Sep­tem­ber 14 press con­fer­ence and sub­se­quent­ly cir­cu­lat­ed through tra­di­tion­al and so­cial me­dia.

The at­tor­ney said Ogeer’s state­ments per­tain to the ap­point­ment of Par­gass and sug­gest that she had an undis­closed con­flict in­volv­ing the Na­tion­al Pay­ment and In­no­va­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NPICTT).

Singh-Poona re­ject­ed the al­le­ga­tions and point­ed to doc­u­ments which she said showed Par­gass’ NPICTT di­rec­tor­ship had been dis­closed dur­ing the re­cruit­ment process and record­ed in her con­flict-of-in­ter­est de­c­la­ra­tion.

She al­so re­lied on le­gal ad­vice ob­tained by TSTT from Free­dom Law Cham­bers, the law­firm head by for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Anand Ram­lo­gan.

The let­ter quotes coun­sel as say­ing, “At present, there is no ev­i­dence be­fore us that Par­gass im­prop­er­ly dis­closed con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion, act­ed dis­hon­est­ly, de­lib­er­ate­ly pre­ferred the in­ter­ests of NPICTT over those of TSTT, im­prop­er­ly in­flu­enced any de­ci­sion of the Board, or oth­er­wise act­ed in bad faith.”

On the staffing al­le­ga­tion, Singh-Poona claimed that TSTT’s hu­man re­sources de­part­ment had trans­mit­ted the staffing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for a gov­er­nance of­fi­cer di­rect­ly to for­mer act­ing TSTT chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Keino Cox for ap­proval. The de­part­ment sub­se­quent­ly han­dled the on­board­ing and is­sued the em­ploy­ment con­tract.

Last Fri­day, TSTT al­so ex­pand­ed its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Cox to in­clude pos­si­ble fraud or dis­hon­est con­duct, con­ceal­ment of ma­te­r­i­al in­for­ma­tion, undis­closed con­flicts and mis­use of ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ty linked to Hum­ming­bird Hold­ings’ pro­posed ac­qui­si­tion of Lib­er­ty’s 49 per cent TSTT share­hold­ing.

Singh-Poona is de­mand­ing a “clear and un­equiv­o­cal writ­ten re­trac­tion”, an un­re­served apol­o­gy and dis­clo­sure of the fac­tu­al ba­sis and sources for the al­le­ga­tions.

The let­ter warns that fail­ure to pro­vide a sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sponse with­in 14 days could re­sult in fur­ther le­gal ac­tion, in­clud­ing claims for dam­ages, in­junc­tive re­lief and costs.