JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

For­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young says the fir­ing of his client, one of three fired se­nior man­agers at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC), is noth­ing more than po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion.  

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Op­po­si­tion's of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Young said the dis­missal of his client, who had 23 years’ ser­vice, is noth­ing short of “tar­get­ed po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion and po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion.” 

“To ter­mi­nate per­ma­nent work­ers at T&TEC is il­le­gal,” he said, adding that it is quite alarm­ing that the dis­missal let­ters were signed by the chair­man Anil Ka­mal and not the CEO.  

“The chair­man, not the CEO, not man­age­r­i­al staff that are charged with the del­e­gat­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to run this state statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ty. No, the po­lit­i­cal­ly ap­point­ed chair­man sees it fit and then copies the gen­er­al man­ag­er (Ian Ram­rat­tan) at T&TEC, which is fir­ing of a per­ma­nent em­ploy­ee. These are not con­tract work­ers that are not hav­ing their con­tracts re­newed.” 

Young said the dis­missals fol­low sim­i­lar fir­ings at oth­er state en­ti­ties.  

“The Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar led-gov­ern­ment, their at­ti­tude is ‘Well they go to court, the State will pay for that,’ they’re com­ing out our pock­ets. Time will tell, but Trinidad and To­ba­go, this is an­oth­er in your face, red flag about po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion and po­lit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion that is be­ing tar­get­ed against cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als who work in the state sec­tor and not even work in the state sec­tor who are deemed to be sup­port­ive of your po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents and there is no ev­i­dence based in that.” 

Young added: “This is a very, very fright­en­ing fur­ther de­vel­op­ment. What you are see­ing is a gal­lop­ing po­ten­tial dic­ta­tor­ship.” 

He said there is no rea­son giv­en in the dis­missal let­ter for the man­agers. 

“I look for­ward to cross-ex­am­in­ing the chair­man,” Young added. 

On the day Young’s client was dis­missed, the util­i­ty com­pa­ny an­nounced the ap­point­ment of two new man­agers. 

In an in­ter­nal memo dat­ed June 30, T&TEC an­nounced the ex­ec­u­tive ap­point­ments of Aniel Jairam, an in­ter­nal au­dit man­ag­er, and Bis­nath Ma­haraj, as the head of se­cu­ri­ty. Jairam as­sumed his po­si­tion the fol­low­ing day, while Ma­haraj will take up his post on Au­gust 1. 

The memo, signed by Ram­rat­tan, con­grat­u­lat­ed the men on their ap­point­ments and wished them every suc­cess in their new roles. 

“Em­ploy­ees are en­cour­aged to ex­tend their full sup­port and co­op­er­a­tion as they as­sume their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties,” he stat­ed in the memo. 

Oth­er se­nior man­agers told Guardian Me­dia that work­ers were anx­ious and fraz­zled by the dis­missals. They say the mat­ter is leav­ing the work­ing en­vi­ron­ment ex­treme­ly tense. 

In a so­cial me­dia post, for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les con­demned the dis­missal, de­scrib­ing it as a “vi­cious dis­crim­i­na­to­ry po­lit­i­cal at­tack.” 

“It is al­so very cu­ri­ous that the chair­man of the board (Anil Ka­mal), who is a po­lit­i­cal ap­pointee of this UNC Gov­ern­ment, signed the let­ters of ter­mi­na­tion and copied same to the gen­er­al man­ag­er. This is a fla­grant breach of sound cor­po­rate gov­er­nance and re­quires im­me­di­ate and ur­gent in­ves­ti­ga­tions. The UNC has now em­barked up­on a full-blown politi­ci­sa­tion of T&TEC and they will de­stroy this es­teemed util­i­ty com­mis­sion in the same way they have de­stroyed WASA in three months.” 

He called on Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath and Ka­mal to ex­plain “this nasty and vi­cious po­lit­i­cal at­tack against the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment of T&TEC.” 

While Padarath is yet to re­spond, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry Clyde El­der, in a What­sApp re­sponse, said, “I have no com­ments sir.” 

Padarath is re­port­ed as say­ing the fir­ings are all part of Gov­ern­ment’s re­view­ing of T&TEC’s man­age­ment.  

“With re­spect to T&TEC, I am ad­vised that there is a re­view and eval­u­a­tion of the man­age­ment team cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing at the com­mis­sion. More will be shared at the ap­pro­pri­ate time,” Padarath said.  

The dis­missals come af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised con­cerns about the ex­is­tence of a spe­cial “non-dis­con­nec­tion list” at T&TEC, which she re­cent­ly read out in Par­lia­ment. The list in­clud­ed the names of cur­rent Op­po­si­tion and for­mer gov­ern­ment mem­bers. T&TEC lat­er in­di­cat­ed the list was an in­ter­nal cour­tesy arrange­ment, ap­plied in some cas­es to of­fice hold­ers who were not nec­es­sar­i­ly aware they were in­clud­ed. 

Dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment on June 15, the Prime Min­is­ter al­so made al­le­ga­tions against at­tor­ney and cur­rent Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land, claim­ing he had failed in his du­ty by not pur­su­ing le­gal ac­tion on T&TEC’s be­half against an er­rant ten­ant be­lieved to be a po­lit­i­cal al­ly. 

A week lat­er, Scot­land and a mem­ber of his le­gal cham­bers re­ceived a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter con­cern­ing their rep­re­sen­ta­tion of T&TEC in its at­tempt to re­cov­er $2.4 mil­lion in un­paid charges from Fla­vorite Foods.

In June last year, months af­ter tak­ing of­fice, the Gov­ern­ment dis­missed WASA CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day and nine oth­er se­nior of­fi­cials.