Brent Zephyrine

For­mer Miss Uni­verse Wendy Fitzwilliam is free to re-ap­ply for the po­si­tion she cur­rent­ly holds at the In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tions Di­vi­sion of Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (e-Teck), once the po­si­tion be­comes va­cant.These sen­ti­ments were ex­pressed yes­ter­day by Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz as he ad­dressed busi­ness ex­ec­u­tives at a lun­cheon se­ries host­ed by the Trinidad Union Club, Nicholas Tow­ers, Port-of-Spain.The lun­cheon marked the group's first for the year and was geared to­wards is­sues "top­i­cal to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty," said the club's pres­i­dent Brett Hob­day.

Cadiz, who was a guest speak­er at the event, was pressed by the T&T Guardian to re­spond to the cur­rent ini­tia­tives of his min­istry to "do a com­plete re­or­gan­i­sa­tion" of the hu­man re­sources with­in e-Teck.In his re­sponse, he said such re­struc­tur­ing was done in the in­ter­est of ef­fi­cien­cy since e-Teck had be­come a dys­func­tion­al en­ti­ty.He added: "E-Teck has not func­tioned the way it should have func­tioned over the years and there is a re­struc­tur­ing go­ing on at e-Teck with a cou­ple new po­si­tions that we have cre­at­ed.

"Any­body who is work­ing with e-Teck, who feels they will be in a po­si­tion to fit the bill, are wel­come to ap­ply for those jobs," he added.Fitzwilliam, the cur­rent vice pres­i­dent of the In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tions Di­vi­sion at e-Teck, was cit­ed as one of the ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers to be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed in the re­struc­tur­ing.She said her po­si­tion was pub­licly ad­ver­tised de­spite nev­er hav­ing her per­for­mance (and that of all the oth­er e-Teck ex­ec­u­tives) "called in­to ques­tion."She added she was not giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reap­ply for the post.Cadiz, in deny­ing those claims, said while there was an "open in­vi­ta­tion for any­body to ap­ply" for the po­si­tions ad­ver­tised, fail­ure to do so was en­tire­ly a per­son­al one.