Un­cer­tain­ty now sur­rounds the sta­tus of both the chair­man and vice chair­man of the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce's To­ba­go Di­vi­sion and ex­act­ly who is re­spon­si­ble for the man­age­ment and con­trol of the in­sti­tu­tion's op­er­a­tions.

This af­ter chair­man Claude Benoit was al­leged­ly oust­ed by the ex­ec­u­tive and vice-chair­man Mar­tin George and a man­age­ment team were giv­en re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to steer the cham­ber for­ward dur­ing a reg­u­lar month­ly meet­ing last Mon­day.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Benoit con­firmed the sit­u­a­tion, "Yes, I am, but I am await­ing a de­ci­sion from the head­quar­ter's lawyers be­fore the next step is tak­en."

Al­so con­tact­ed on the un­usu­al de­ci­sion, George said, "The vice chair­man and a man­age­ment team are fo­cused on the three im­por­tant as­pects of the Cham­ber's man­age­ment at this time."

Pressed for clar­i­fi­ca­tion, George re­peat­ed his com­ment and not­ed that the cham­ber "is prepar­ing a pre-bud­get state­ment, a break­fast meet­ing with Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith and a Cham­ber Can Cook event on No­vem­ber 3."

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that news of Benoit's oust­ing was sent to the Cham­ber's Trinidad head­quar­ters via a let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 12, six days be­fore Benoit re­turned to To­ba­go on Sep­tem­ber 18.

In it, the rea­sons be­hind the de­ci­sion were stat­ed. They in­clud­ed "the way the Cham­ber is func­tion­ing," Benoit's "ex­tend­ed ab­sence" and his "lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Cham­ber."

How­ev­er, Benoit, a two-term As­sem­bly­man, told Guardian Me­dia that when the Trinidad Cham­ber got the let­ter they im­me­di­ate­ly called him to ask what was hap­pen­ing. He said when he re­turned from va­ca­tion he got wind that ac­tion was al­ready tak­en in To­ba­go and news of the de­ci­sion was "in the pub­lic do­main."

Asked if he had vis­it­ed the To­ba­go Cham­ber's of­fice and done his any of du­ties since then, he said: "I have not been there."

Asked if he was ac­cus­tomed to mak­ing de­ci­sions on be­half of the cham­ber while abroad, the busi­ness­man said: "Once I am out of the coun­try the vice chair­man does those du­ties and he has the pow­er to do every­thing that the chair­man can."

Pressed on why a de­ci­sion might have been tak­en for his re­moval, he said since he was ap­point­ed in March he had at­tempt­ed to change the way the cham­ber was con­duct­ing busi­ness with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and Gov­ern­ment.

"I have been an As­sem­bly­man and I know that ne­go­ti­a­tions and di­a­logues are im­por­tant if the cham­ber is to move ahead and I want­ed the cham­ber to go in a par­tic­u­lar di­rec­tion."

He added: "I want­ed to set the stage for us to move for­ward."

Asked how he felt about the sit­u­a­tion, he said: "The bot­tom line is that it doesn't look good."

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke with some cham­ber mem­bers, some of whom al­so at­tend­ed the month­ly meet­ing where the de­ci­sion to re­place Benoit was al­leged­ly made. How­ev­er, all of them said the de­ci­sion was "news" to them. None of the mem­bers, how­ev­er, was will­ing to have their names or de­tailed com­ments record­ed.