An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Sean Roach is step­ping down from his po­si­tion as chair­man of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT).

This was con­firmed by Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les who said Roach had dis­cussed the mat­ter with him and want­ed time to deal with some ur­gent per­son­al fam­i­ly mat­ters.

“Such a great loss at this time for TSTT, He served two im­pres­sive terms,” the min­is­ter said.

Roach’s res­ig­na­tion will take ef­fect lat­er this month.

Asked who will be re­plac­ing Roach, Gon­za­les said: “None one as yet.”

Roach was first ap­point­ed TSTT chair­man on Feb­ru­ary 7, 2020, then reap­point­ed to the po­si­tion on March 15, 2022, and in March 2024.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, TSTT CEO) Kent West­ern said: “I can con­firm that I have been ad­vised last evening of our chair­man’s res­ig­na­tion. How­ev­er, fur­ther de­tails on this mat­ter should come from his of­fice, as he re­mains the chair­man through Jan­u­ary 15.”

Calls to Roach’s phone went unan­swered.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union (CWU) sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer said: “Up­on learn­ing of the res­ig­na­tion of TSTT’S Chair­man, the CWU bids farewell and all suc­cess to Roach as his tran­si­tion is syn­ony­mous to the PM, one of a choice to be with fam­i­ly and per­son­al rea­sons.”

Ogeer added that the Union is al­ways scep­ti­cal about the tim­ing of events at the state-owned en­ti­ty.

“It would be re­miss of me to note my ut­ter dis­ap­point­ment in now re­al­is­ing the ab­sence of the cy­ber in­cur­sion re­port and Roach demit­ting of­fice.  

“Al­so, for­mer chair­man Emile Elias bowed out right af­ter the pur­chase of Am­plia. The CWU is still adamant that there’s some­thing shroud­ed in se­cre­cy with the Guyanese-based com­pa­ny where the cur­rent CEO Kent West­ern was a speak­er at a launch in Guyana.  Note­wor­thy, the Union is ea­ger to learn of his re­place­ment and trusts that this per­son will en­com­pass the core val­ues of the Com­pa­ny and the stake­hold­er en­gage­ments of the union.

TSTT is joint­ly owned by Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (NEL) and Ca­ble and Wire­less (West In­dies) Ltd. NEL, which is ma­jor­i­ty-owned by the Gov­ern­ment, owns 51 per cent of TSTT’s is­sued share cap­i­tal, while Ca­ble and Wire­lesh­olds the re­main­ing 49 per cent.  

The com­pa­ny re­port­ed an af­ter-tax prof­it of US$19 mil­lion for the year end­ed March 31, 2024, mark­ing a 36 per cent in­crease com­pared to the pri­or year. For the year end­ed March 31, 2023, TSTT made a prof­it of US$14 mil­lion.

On the T&T Se­cu­ri­ty Ex­change Com­mis­sion web­site on Oc­to­ber 7, TSTT re­port­ed  a US$12 mil­lion in­crease in rev­enue from US$ 277 mil­lion last year to US$ 289 mil­lion for this fi­nan­cial year.”