Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Al­though he was re­ject­ed by the Gov­ern­ment for the post of Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al of the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), Dr Ster­ling Frost has ap­plied for the job a sec­ond time.

Last week, the Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed that Gov­ern­ment had re­ject­ed Frost, the re­cip­i­ent of the coun­try’s high­est award- the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of T&T- 10 months ago, as the new Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al of the TTRA.

Frost, cur­rent­ly Group Deputy Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of First Cit­i­zens—Op­er­a­tions and Ad­min­is­tra­tion, had topped the re­cruit­ment process con­duct­ed by Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PWC) but was sub­se­quent­ly re­ject­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.

The TTRA is on its sec­ond re­cruit­ment dri­ve for the post. Ap­pli­ca­tions closed on May 25, 2023.

The Sun­day Guardian was told that Frost ap­plied for the post once again. When con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, he de­clined to com­ment.

Last week, Frost said he had par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ini­tial re­cruit­ment and se­lec­tion process for the job and had been in­formed that he was the se­lect­ed can­di­date.

“I am aware through in­for­ma­tion in the me­dia that the TTRA is fac­ing sev­er­al for­ma­tion and set­up chal­lenges which I be­lieve will be re­solved, in­clud­ing the re­cruit­ment and se­lec­tion of the right in­di­vid­u­als for the right roles. I re­main will­ing to serve our cou, from De­cem­ber 2022 to March 2023, which cost the TTRA $119,965.

Mean­while, Frost no longer serves as the deputy chair­man of the Pub­lic Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (PSC). He was not re­newed to the post when his term of of­fice end­ed in May.

On June 12, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo ap­point­ed An­to­nia Pop­plewell as the new deputy chair­man of the PSC.

The PSC will have to over­see the re­cruit­ment of suit­able peo­ple for the posts of the En­force­ment Unit of the TTRA.

Frost is set to leave First Cit­i­zens when he turns 60 in De­cem­ber.

The Sun­day Guardian learnt that the bank had tak­en is­sue with some of the con­tent- bank­ing in­for­ma­tion- pub­lished in Frost’s book, “Cal­i­brat­ing Or­ga­ni­za­tion­al Cul­ture: A Di­alec­ti­cal Mod­el To­wards Com­pet­i­tive Ad­van­tage” which was launched last No­vem­ber.

As such, First Cit­i­zens opt­ed not to ex­tend his con­tract for an ad­di­tion­al five years when the mat­ter was raised at a board meet­ing. Frost al­so de­clined to com­ment on this is­sue.

The bank’s chief ex­ec­u­tive Karen Dar­basie main­tained that she was un­able to com­ment on con­fi­den­tial/per­son­al in­for­ma­tion on any em­ploy­ee.

Frost re­ceived the ORTT for his con­tri­bu­tion in the spheres of bank­ing, ed­u­ca­tion and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice.

He has a Mas­ter’s de­gree and a Doc­tor­ate in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion from The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI ) and in Feb­ru­ary 2019 he was the first per­son at UWI to be ap­point­ed Pro­fes­sor of Prac­tice: Man­age­ment Stud­ies.