Just over a week after 68 workers were fired for allegedly engaging in "illegal strike" action, chief executive officer at the state-owned National Petroleum, Kenneth Mohammed, has been suspended with immediate effect.But while the company remained tight-lipped on Mohammed's suspension last evening, Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine confirmed the decision.In a text messaged response last night, Ramnarine said he was "advised" of the suspension.
"I am advised that the board of NP was in support of the decision. I have asked for a report which was sent to my office today (yesterday)," he said.Ramnarine said, however, that he had not yet read the report and as such could not say why Mohammed was suspended, as he was attending a Divali function hosted by the ministry in San Fernando.Repeated calls, text messages and e-mails sent to NP chairman Neil Gosine went unanswered yesterday.
The company's acting communication manager Rae Gilbert, meanwhile, said she "cannot confirm the suspension.""If the minister has, I cannot speak for him, but I cannot confirm that, as I have not been given any information to that effect," Gilbert said in a telephone interview yesterday.Mohammed was placed in the post early last year, replacing Richard Callender, who was fired in 2011 for extending a $24 million credit facility to a service station owner.
Ramnarine is expected to meet with NP's board tomorrow on this matter.According to NP's profile, Mohammed has been "recognised internationally and locally as a pioneer in business and finance, has extensive experience in operations, financial management, multi-channel distribution and marketing" and held "key executive management positions at several multi-national companies in Angola, Republic of Congo, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and the United Kingdom."
His former employers include KPMG, Global Marine (now Global Santa Fe/Transocean), Coca Cola and more recently Microsoft Corporation as their CFO for the Eastern and Southern Caribbean. JTUM want workers reinstatedWord of Mohammed's suspension came hours after an early-morning Oilfields Workers' Trade Union-led protest outside NP's head office at Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain, yesterday morning.
Contacted on the matter last evening, OWTU president general Ancel Roget said while he had heard of Mohammed's suspension he did not know what prompted it. He said, however, that he did not believe their earlier protest had anything to do with Mohammed's suspension."But he was the person central to the suspension of some 68 workers last week," he said.Roget claimed it was Mohammed who "did the Government's bidding and fired the workers."
The company and the union remain at loggerheads over the reasons for the 68 dismissals.While the company has since maintained the dismissals were sanctioned by the senior management after consultations with internal and external industrial relations experts and were a result of illegal industrial action, Roget contends the workers were off the jobs because they were adhering to proper health and safety regulations.
Roget and members of the Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM) yesterday called for the reinstatement of the workers, who were fired on October 22 for an "illegal work stoppage" between August 13 and 15. Approximately 150 workers, including members of the JTUM, gathered at NP's gates in solidarity with the dismissed workers.
At the protest, PSA first vice-president Rosanna Robinson said PSA leader Watson Duke's brother was one of the fired workers."We can't sit at the helm and not come out here and show support," she said.Communication Workers Union education officer Clyde Elder admonished Minister of Labour Errol McLeod, who was once OWTU president general, and asked if he remembered where he began.BIGWU president Vincent Cabrera condemned NP management and claimed it was a mass industrial execution of the workers.
With reporting by Camille Clarke