Executives of the state-owned T&T Electricity Commission (T&TEC) travelled to Colombia for a three-day visit from July 8 to 11 to meet manufacturers of products for the energy sector, Proexport Colombia confirmed in a series of e-mail messages and telephone conversations from July 11 to August 5.
"Representatives of the T&TEC will develop a trade agenda with visits to local energy companies and manufacturers of items for this sector. The meetings are organised by Proexport Colombia," the Colombian state-owned export promotion company had said on its Web site.
Asked about the success of the meetings, Proexport, which is usually eager to tell of the success of its trips, referred this one to T&TEC. When contacted, the local electricity company failed to account for its executives' trip to Colombia, and refused to answer questions on the trip that took them to the two Colombian cities of Bogota and Medellin.
T&TEC communications manager Annabelle Brasnell who initially said she would "try to respond" to the e-mail query on July 11 did not respond to follow up messages on July 18 or 22. By August 4, an auto-responder saying she would be out of office referred queries to acting manager Clare Cooper who also failed to respond.
Also, the web page at http://www.proexport.com.co/eventos/compania-de-energia-de-trinidad-y-tobago-se-reunira-con-empresarios-de-bogota-y-medellin which had the announcement about the trip stopped working, although Proexport's new publicity agency said in an e-mail "the article was not deleted from the platform, but rather it was updated with more recent activity.
This news piece was part of the Proexport agenda that is updated on a weekly basis and it might have been changed the second time you attempted to access the information; which is why it wasn't there." When asked for the new link, none was provided.
Writing on behalf of Carlos Gonzalez, director of Proexport Colombia, Roxana Ruiz, a client executive at Burson-Marsteller, Puerto Rico said: "We have passed on your contact information to T&TEC and they will be getting in touch directly with you. However, if you would like to obtain more information on the electrical sector of Colombia, we would gladly provide that information upon request." Aleem Khan