Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Four mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive of the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union have been sus­pend­ed un­der the in­struc­tion of its pres­i­dent Don De­venish.

A union mem­ber ex­plained to Guardian Me­dia that De­venish called a meet­ing of the gen­er­al coun­cil on Thurs­day where ac­cu­sa­tions were read out against the union’s Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee mem­bers—Ja­son Brown (Deputy Pres­i­dent), Na­dine Baksh (Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary), Naresh Ram­per­sad (Deputy Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary) and Sta­cy Ann Lewis (As­sis­tant Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary).

The ac­cu­sa­tions were that the mem­bers had un­der­mined his au­thor­i­ty by plan­ning a re­tire­ment func­tion when he turns 65 in Ju­ly. The union’s laws re­quire the pres­i­dent to re­tire at that age and any ex­ten­sion “will be sub­ject to Gen­er­al Coun­cil di­rec­tive”.

Guardian Me­dia was told that they were sim­ply fol­low­ing pro­ce­dure and De­venish nev­er stat­ed his in­ten­tion to stay on be­yond his 65th birth­day, and to serve out the rest of his term.

The coun­cil then re­port­ed­ly moved a mo­tion to have them im­me­di­ate­ly sus­pend­ed.

But sources with­in the union added that the move to sus­pend them may be about the par­ties be­ing at log­ger­heads with De­venish over fi­nan­cial mat­ters with­in the union.

In a let­ter sent to mem­bers of the Re­pub­lic Bank fac­tion of BIG­WU, the largest group rep­re­sent­ed by the union, Branch Pres­i­dent Ja­son Thomas called the man­ner in which the mem­bers were sus­pend­ed “cor­rup­tion of the high­est or­der”.

“Via the es­tab­lished process for de­ci­sion mak­ing on this body (mo­tions put forth, ac­cept­ed and vot­ed on), these per­sons were sus­pend­ed with pay pend­ing the out­come of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the claims which are to be con­duct­ed by five mem­bers of the same Gen­er­al Coun­cil who were then cho­sen by vote for can­di­dates de­sirous of be­ing part of this ‘in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­mit­tee’,” Thomas said in the let­ter.

The con­tention is that mem­bers vot­ing in favour of the mo­tion for sus­pen­sion will form the ma­jor­i­ty of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­mit­tee. Thomas al­so com­plained that Brown was not giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to the al­le­ga­tions made against him.

De­venish and Brown have been at log­ger­heads for some time. Guardian Me­dia has seen a let­ter sent to Brown ac­cus­ing him of “ag­gres­sive­ly and vi­o­lent­ly” push­ing a door “with the in­ten­tion of strik­ing the pres­i­dent’s face”. The let­ter al­so ac­cused Brown of be­ing dis­re­spect­ful by re­peat­ed­ly say­ing “tic toc tic toc Ju­ly 13 is com­ing soon”, ref­er­enc­ing De­venish’s im­pend­ing re­tire­ment.

De­venish has been tak­ing heat from the mem­ber­ship in re­cent months over fi­nan­cial mat­ters.

Sources with­in the union said the is­sues have stemmed from the time of the elec­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2022. De­venish’s elec­tion vic­to­ry was a close one, caus­ing a split among the mem­bers.

In re­sponse to a re­quest for com­ment, Brown said, “I can at this time con­firm your ques­tion that four elect­ed mem­bers of the sev­en-mem­ber Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive are on sus­pen­sion and are con­sid­er­ing all op­tions avail­able to en­sure that the best in­ter­ests of the union as an in­sti­tu­tion and by ex­ten­sion, the best in­ter­est of our mem­ber­ship is held above all else.”

Re­peat­ed calls to De­venish’s phone went unan­swered. Guardian Me­dia placed three calls to De­venish phone yes­ter­day be­tween 5 pm and 8.30 pm and al­so sent a text mes­sage at 7.21 pm and again at 9.15 pm.