PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

As ques­tions mount over the lead­er­ship of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC), at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen is due to re­ceive his for­mal in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment to the com­pa­ny’s Board of Di­rec­tors.

In re­cent days, Guardian Me­dia learnt that the board in­cludes Ramdeen along­side Ram­nar­ine Be­dasie, Naz­im Sar­jad, Dr Ram­per­sad Moti­lal, Saman­tha Su­ru­jbal­ly, Dar­ren Mitchell, and Dr Ah­mad Khan.

Ramdeen de­clined fur­ther com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day but point­ed out that the ap­point­ment of the board was a Cab­i­net mat­ter. 

“I haven’t been giv­en any in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment as yet. Un­til Cab­i­net in­forms me by virtue of an in­stru­ment, then I would not want to com­ment on the mat­ter,” Ramdeen added.

Ramdeen was named as the per­son to re­place the new NGC chair­man, Dr Randy Ra­mad­har Singh, who was ap­point­ed to that role on June 4.

Ra­mad­har Singh re­placed Dr Joseph Ishamel Khan, who had served as NGC chair­man from Sep­tem­ber 2022 pri­or to his res­ig­na­tion in May.

Fol­low­ing Ra­mad­har Singh’s ap­point­ment, a cir­cu­lar went out to staff wel­com­ing him as the new NGC chair­man. Ra­mad­har Singh al­so met with the act­ing NGC pres­i­dent Ed­mund Sub­ryan and held a meet­ing with oth­er pres­i­dents of NGC sub­sidiaries two Fri­days ago.

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed that there was a dis­pute be­tween Ra­mad­har Singh and a spe­cial ad­vis­er to Gov­ern­ment over a con­tract. This dis­agree­ment re­port­ed­ly led to the rapid change.

Last week, NGC sources de­nied the claims that Ramdeen had re­placed Ra­mad­har Singh, as no for­mal no­tice had been is­sued. How­ev­er, oth­ers hint­ed that Ramdeen may re­ceive the doc­u­ments to­mor­row.

Ra­mad­har Singh did not an­swer calls from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Calls and text mes­sages to NGC’s line min­is­ter, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, yes­ter­day did not re­ceive any re­sponse.

NGC of­fi­cials ex­pressed con­cern that chang­ing chair­man so quick­ly would neg­a­tive­ly af­fect trust in the com­pa­ny, with its stock prices like­ly to take a hit on the T&T Stock Ex­change Mar­ket.

The NGC and its sub­sidiaries are an in­te­grat­ed group of over 30 en­er­gy com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Na­tion­al En­er­gy), Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Lim­it­ed (PPG­PL), NGC Green Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NGC Green), Trinidad and To­ba­go NGL Lim­it­ed (TTNGL), and La Brea In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (LABID­CO).

The state com­pa­ny is seen as a vi­tal cog of the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my.