DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) is call­ing for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the state­ments made by for­mer Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) CEO Lisa Agard, who al­leged that she was not al­lowed to pub­licly clar­i­fy in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the Oc­to­ber 9 da­ta breach at the state-owned com­pa­ny.

Dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of Par­lia­ment in­to the com­pa­ny’s man­age­ment of the breach on Mon­day, Agard spoke about her role in the fi­as­co. She was fired weeks af­ter the cy­ber­at­tack.

Agard, an at­tor­ney by pro­fes­sion, told the JSC that the root cause of the cy­ber­at­tack was not re­port­ed, cit­ing an in­ter­im re­port that con­firmed one ac­count be­ing a pri­ma­ry source of ma­li­cious ac­tiv­i­ty as ear­ly as Oc­to­ber 3, 2023, al­though she was not no­ti­fied about it im­me­di­ate­ly.

Agard fur­ther claimed that she was forced to beg TSTT chair­man Sean Roach and the board for per­mis­sion to com­mu­ni­cate with mem­bers of the pub­lic af­ter the “mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion” by Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les. How­ev­er, she claimed she was blocked from do­ing so.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, CWU Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer said while she was scep­ti­cal about Agard’s claim that she was not told about an ini­tial breach prompt­ly, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion needs to be or­dered in­to whether she was pre­vent­ed from re­leas­ing per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic.

“Once the state­ments have been sub­stan­ti­at­ed, per­sons who di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly con­tributed to muz­zling her, and those are her words, should be held ac­count­able and be dis­missed. And that is to say, if it is re­duced to the en­tire board of di­rec­tors, they should be re­moved,” Ogeer said.

Ogeer made it clear that the union was not sym­pa­thet­ic to Agard or TSTT’s for­mer CFO Shi­va Ram­nar­ine, who al­so ap­peared be­fore the JSC, and made al­le­ga­tions that his at­tempts to make changes to wastage in spend­ing in cer­tain ar­eas at the com­pa­ny were be­ing thwart­ed by the board.

How­ev­er, Ogeer said de­spite the for­mer TSTT ex­ec­u­tives’ at­tempts to de­fend them­selves, it was re­ceived as an at­tempt to shirk re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the com­pa­ny’s poor re­sponse to the cy­ber at­tack. She al­so ac­cused both of breach­ing their fidu­cia­ry du­ties.

“Their ut­ter­ances, more­so Mr Ram­nar­ine, who we have nev­er sup­port­ed, con­firms what the union has been clam­our­ing and ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment to look in­to at TSTT and that is the wan­ton wastage and cor­rup­tion in the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned en­ti­ty. So, it’s a pity that due to now not be­ing in the seat of pow­er, par­ties have now grown a con­science to ut­ter the very con­cerns made by the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union,” she said.

The CWU will host a me­dia con­fer­ence to­mor­row to com­ment fur­ther on Mon­day’s JSC.

Mean­while, the Princes Town MP and Op­po­si­tion Shad­ow Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Bar­ry Padarath, de­mand­ed that Gon­za­les ap­pear be­fore the JSC to re­spond to ques­tions on the da­ta breach.

Padarath de­scribed the sub­mis­sions by Agard and Ram­nar­ine as “ex­plo­sive” and said Gon­za­les had a du­ty to re­spond to their al­le­ga­tions.

Back in Jan­u­ary, Gon­za­les had said he was pre­pared to ap­pear be­fore any JSC to which he is called. When news spread about the cy­ber­at­tack, Gon­za­les ini­tial­ly de­nied it in Par­lia­ment on No­vem­ber 1 but ac­knowl­edged it in a press re­lease on No­vem­ber 5 and or­dered an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.