Janelle Pen­ny Com­mis­siong has been fired as chair­man of Tourism Trinidad Ltd (TTL).

Com­mis­siong’s dis­missal came 24 days af­ter the board which she led dis­missed for­mer Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of TTL, Camille Camp­bell and non-stop fight­ing among mem­bers of the Board of Di­rec­tors.

Gov­ern­ment on Wednes­day an­nounced that for­mer Tourism Min­is­ter in the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion, busi­ness­man Howard Chin Lee will be the new chair at TTL and cleaned the slate with not a sin­gle di­rec­tor of the for­mer board be­ing re­tained.

None of the oth­er new mem­bers of the board have any back­ground in tourism ac­cord­ing to their qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

Cor­po­ra­tion sole Colm Im­bert had been left with lit­tle choice but to ap­point a new board, af­ter the Com­mis­siong-led TTL vir­tu­al­ly col­lapsed in of­fice when six of the di­rec­tors quit, leav­ing the board with­out a quo­rum.

Guardian Me­dia had re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that for­mer CEO, who was ap­point­ed in Jan­u­ary 2019, had been fired six months in­to the job. Com­mis­siong and a small clique of the board act­ed against the ad­vice of Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell and dis­missed the for­mer CEO.

Camp­bell has since through her at­tor­neys is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to TTL. De­spite the change in guard, Camp­bell told Guardian Me­dia she in­tends to pro­ceed with the le­gal ac­tion.

“To this let­ter, there has not yet been any re­sponse. I am con­fi­dent that I have a very good case and I would not like to com­ment in any way that might af­fect that. All I could add to that is that I am con­fi­dent in my le­gal team to seek jus­tice on my be­half,” she said.

Just two weeks ago, Com­mis­siong in­sist­ed that the life of the Board which she led had been ex­tend­ed by two years, an ex­ten­sion which cor­po­ra­tion Sole ap­peared to be un­aware of.

Yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Tourism an­nounced the ap­point­ment of a Chin Lee-led board, ef­fec­tive­ly bring­ing to an ear­ly end the tenure of the Com­mis­siong-led board which should have end­ed in Au­gust.

It ad­vised that the Chin Lee was ap­point­ed chair­man for a pe­ri­od of two years.

In an in­ter­view, Chin Lee said he planned to move with speed­i­ly to deal with any le­gal is­sue fac­ing TTL.

“If there are mat­ters which in­volve le­gal is­sues I will move with alacrity to try and reg­u­larise and sort that mat­ter out but from my point of view it’s re­al­ly to move for­ward and get tourism on track,” Chin Lee told Guardian Me­dia.

TTL’s new chair­man said he in­tend­ed to hit the ground run­ning and will not be bogged down by things that have re­cent­ly hap­pened with the last board.

“It’s re­al­ly to get tourism on track. We will see who are the best peo­ple to be in the in­dus­try,” Chin Lee in­sist­ed.

He said the peo­ple who are most suit­able to run the sec­tor are the ones who suc­ceed­ed in the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors.

“One has to look close­ly at where are to­day and how we can build go­ing for­ward,” Chin Lee added.

He said his pri­or­i­ty will be to meet with the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in the in­dus­try in­clud­ing the ho­tel as­so­ci­a­tion and tour op­er­a­tors.

The oth­er mem­bers of the board are Nata­nia Mack, deputy chair­man, Avalaughn Hug­gins, Ter­rance Bhag­wats­ingh, Shezrae Nes­bitt, Les­ley-Ann As­see, Bri­an Lewis, De­von Seale and Shiv­ana In­als­ingh.

Ed­i­tor’s Note

The Busi­ness Guardian’s BG View ti­tled Time to Go was writ­ten and print­ed be­fore yes­ter­day’s an­nounce­ment and there­fore called on Gov­ern­ment to take the very ac­tion and ap­point a new board with a new chair­man.