Renu­ka Singh

Gabriel Faria will re­main as Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, af­ter apol­o­gis­ing last week for com­ments he made on a What­sApp that were harsh­ly crit­i­cised by the prime min­is­ter.

In a me­dia state­ment yes­ter­day, the cham­ber said the Board of Di­rec­tors met with Faria to “dis­cuss mat­ters re­lat­ed to re­cent news and so­cial me­dia cov­er­age”.

“As a re­sult of the dis­cus­sions, the board has de­ter­mined that Faria will con­tin­ue in his cur­rent po­si­tion as CEO of the TT Cham­ber,” the re­lease said.

Faria’s po­si­tion came un­der ques­tion last Wednes­day evening af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley took to so­cial me­dia to as­sail Faria for the state­ment he (Faria) made on a pri­vate chat.

At the time that Row­ley post­ed the scathing com­ments about Faria, it was un­clear what the Prime Min­is­ter was re­fer­ring to as Faria had not said any­thing in the pub­lic do­main to elic­it such a strong re­sponse from Dr Row­ley.

In that post, Row­ley de­scribed Faria as hav­ing an “acid tongue” and ac­cused Faria of us­ing his po­si­tion to “in­flu­ence vot­ers with his dis­mis­sive shal­low­ness” and of be­ing crit­i­cal of those who of­fered them­selves for pub­lic of­fice while not do­ing that him­self. He al­so ac­cused Faria of try­ing to “suck what he could from the coun­try”.

On Thurs­day, Faria is­sued a pub­lic apol­o­gy and it was on­ly then that he re­vealed what he had said that of­fend­ed the PM.

In a pri­vate What­sApp con­ver­sa­tion with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 130 busi­ness­men, aca­d­e­mics and jour­nal­ists, Faria was crit­i­cal of both po­lit­i­cal par­ties and said that their main goal was to con­tin­ue to keep their par­ties in pow­er and “con­tin­ue to live (sic) high off the backs of hon­est tax­pay­ing cit­i­zens. I am dis­gust­ed with the be­hav­iour/dis­dain/ap­a­thy dis­placed (sic) by both par­ties”.

On Fri­day, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that Faria had ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion but that was re­fut­ed by Cham­ber pres­i­dent Reyaz Ahamad.

In yes­ter­day’s me­dia re­lease, the cham­ber said that Faria will “con­tin­ue with his role” as CEO.

“The Board is of the view and Mr. Faria agrees, that he should al­ways be mind­ful of his role and oblig­a­tions as the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the TT Cham­ber,” it said.

“Over the past three years Mr Faria has helped to build a strong and ef­fec­tive Cham­ber of Com­merce, as a cred­i­ble ad­vo­cate for our mem­bers and the wider busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty,” it said.

The cham­ber said that the board would al­so like to “reaf­firm the role of the T&T Cham­ber, as an ad­vo­ca­cy body com­mit­ted to the high­est stan­dards of en­ter­prise, to pur­sue a col­lab­o­ra­tive and con­struc­tive di­a­logue with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the busi­ness sec­tor,” it said.

The cham­ber de­scribed it­self as the “voice of busi­ness” and said that the cham­ber would “con­tin­ue to act as a cham­pi­on of busi­ness and to ad­vo­cate on be­half of the pri­vate sec­tor”.