The Ex­port-Im­port Bank of T&T (Ex­im­bank) treats all em­ploy­ee mat­ters con­fi­den­tial­ly. This was the re­sponse by Ex­im­bank chair­man Ed­win Chari­ah yes­ter­day, amid con­cerns over the re­cent dis­missal of CEO Navin Dook­er­an.

Chari­ah’s re­sponse came a day af­ter Navin’s fa­ther, Win­ston Dook­er­an, a for­mer Con­gress of the Peo­ple leader and Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment fi­nance min­is­ter, said his son’s dis­missal was done wrong­ful­ly and was gross­ly un­just.

Dook­er­an said he had learned that there was no board de­ci­sion on the mat­ter, and no cause for the dis­missal was stat­ed.

The Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce, the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber, the Greater Tu­na­puna Ar­eas Cham­ber of Com­merce and the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers have al­so ex­pressed con­cerns and un­ease about the is­sue. They have called for fair­ness, sta­bil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of for­eign ex­change fol­low­ing Navin Dook­er­an’s dis­missal.

In a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Chari­ah said he was un­able to an­swer any queries about Dook­er­an’s dis­missal.

“The Ex­im­bank is fo­cused on trans­form­ing its op­er­a­tions to­wards greater ef­fi­cien­cy, ef­fec­tive­ness and ad­her­ence to its core prin­ci­ples and man­date. Ob­vi­ous­ly, in so do­ing, some or­gan­i­sa­tion­al and pro­ce­dur­al changes are re­quired. Stake­hold­ers are as­sured that the bank re­mains com­mit­ted to dis­charg­ing its du­ties to the sec­tors un­der its re­mit in a struc­tured and eq­ui­table man­ner,” he said.