While one for­mer CEO of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) is re­fus­ing to com­ment, an­oth­er is main­tain­ing that round-the-clock se­cu­ri­ty for act­ing CEO Kent West­ern is “wan­ton wastage”.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Lisa Agard said it is un­jus­ti­fi­able for her suc­ces­sor to utilise se­cu­ri­ty at $65 per hour which amounts to around $44,000 a month.

Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Bar­ry Padarath gave a rough es­ti­mate of a $49,000 cost on Wednes­day when he pre­sent­ed de­tails re­trieved from TSTT af­ter a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) re­quest was filed.

Padarath spoke on the is­sue at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ me­dia brief­ing at the par­ty’s Ch­agua­nas head­quar­ters on Wednes­day.

Com­ment­ing on the mat­ter once again af­ter speak­ing about it at a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment back in Feb­ru­ary, Agard re­it­er­at­ed that she was of­fered the ser­vice but turned it down be­cause of the pre­car­i­ous fi­nan­cial po­si­tion the com­pa­ny was in.

“When we had to make some very dif­fi­cult and painful de­ci­sions about sep­a­rat­ing a con­sid­er­able num­ber of em­ploy­ees in the or­gan­i­sa­tion, even in those dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances I formed the view that in­cur­ring ex­pens­es for se­cu­ri­ty was not jus­ti­fied for me as CEO.

“I do not think that it is an ex­pen­di­ture that is jus­ti­fied, hav­ing re­gard to all of the cir­cum­stances of the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions. In my view, it’s a wan­ton waste of ex­pen­di­ture,” Agard said.

Her pre­de­ces­sor, Ronald Wal­cott, who re­signed as CEO in Oc­to­ber 2020 af­ter six years in the po­si­tion, de­clined to speak on any­thing TSTT-re­lat­ed be­cause of what he called “the arrange­ment” he has with the com­pa­ny.

How­ev­er, Agard, who was axed fol­low­ing the 2023 cy­ber­at­tack which saw over a mil­lion peo­ple’s da­ta up­loaded to the dark web, in­sist­ed that the pro­vi­sion of 24/7 se­cu­ri­ty is a sig­nif­i­cant ex­pense.

Fur­ther­more, she ques­tioned why West­ern re­quires pro­tec­tion, as she re­called that she was not threat­ened de­spite 468 TSTT em­ploy­ees be­ing re­trenched dur­ing her tenure. She sug­gest­ed that the TSTT board scrap the pro­vi­sion if it is not re­quired.

“I think that is a mat­ter for the board to con­sid­er se­ri­ous­ly. If the risk pro­file for the then-CEO (her­self) did not jus­ti­fy se­cu­ri­ty ex­pen­di­ture, I can­not en­vis­age why an act­ing CEO, this is not even some­body sub­stan­tive­ly in the po­si­tion, why an act­ing CEO will re­quire 24/7 se­cu­ri­ty.”

West­ern’s as­cen­sion to the post of CEO has been un­der con­tro­ver­sy af­ter claims by the op­po­si­tion that he re­ceived poor re­views on his KPIs. Be­fore his lat­est ap­point­ment, he was TSTT’s gen­er­al man­ag­er of cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence and mar­ket­ing.

Mean­while, Agard stat­ed that while she led the com­pa­ny, TSTT un­der­went cost-cut­ting mea­sures that were re­port­ed­ly due to the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and changes in tech­nol­o­gy which af­fect­ed op­er­a­tions. She be­lieves that the en­tire com­pa­ny should make sac­ri­fices and the leader of the or­gan­i­sa­tion should set an ex­am­ple.

TSTT’s chair­man, Sean Roach, did not re­spond to calls or text mes­sages on the mat­ter. Oth­er board mem­bers could not be con­tact­ed as it is cur­rent­ly in­com­plete. The term of of­fice of its eight di­rec­tors end­ed on March 14 and new in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment have not yet been giv­en.