Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Ani­ka Ale­ong, head of sales mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tions de­part­ment at the State-owned Caribbean New Me­dia Group Ltd (CN­MG), walked off the job last Fri­day, stat­ing there is a com­plete break­down of trust and con­fi­dence in man­age­ment. In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian on Sun­day, Ale­ong said the sit­u­a­tion be­gan when the new board was ap­point­ed on Feb­ru­ary 24. She as­sumed her po­si­tion on Feb­ru­ary 1. The board mem­bers are Bri­an Stone, chair­man; Liana Ram­sa­hai, deputy chair­man; Maukesh Bas­deo, Sharon King, Ronald Rat­tan, Faied Mo­hammed, Ke­van Gibbs, Thokozile James and Cer­ti­ca Williams-Orr. "I start­ed to see im­me­di­ate changes in the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny and it had got­ten worse."

Point­ing to a Feb­ru­ary 26 ar­ti­cle in the T&T Guardian, Ale­ong said the chair­man stat­ed that "he in­tends to have a "firm grip" on the state-owned me­dia com­pa­ny." She ex­plained that the chair­man lived up to his promis­es on hav­ing a firm grip on the com­pa­ny, which re­sult­ed in neg­a­tive out­comes. Aim­ing specif­i­cal­ly at the chair­man of the board, she stat­ed "the con­duct of man­age­ment and the ac­tions of the chair­man were go­ing against her core val­ues and plans." Ale­ong said she wrote to man­age­ment on two oc­ca­sions ex­press­ing her dis­sat­is­fac­tion and dis­con­tent with how man­age­ment was op­er­at­ing the State-owned com­pa­ny. On Fri­day, she said she sub­mit­ted a third let­ter voic­ing sim­i­lar con­cerns and out­lin­ing her po­si­tion.

When man­age­ment re­ceived the let­ter, Ale­ong said a man­ag­er con­tact­ed her via tele­phone and said to her: "With a let­ter like this, you can­not stay." Ale­ong said she re­spond­ed: "I know. I am pack­ing up to leave." Asked if there was any grow­ing an­i­mos­i­ty be­tween the man­age­ment and her­self, she said she was un­able to di­vulge de­tails but ex­plained the trust was erod­ed and she felt there was no room for her any­more. She said the man­ner in which "CN­MG was be­ing man­aged was not in the best in­ter­est of the com­pa­ny and as a re­sult of what I wit­nessed and ex­pe­ri­enced, I was left with no choice."

Ale­ong said she has re­ferred the mat­ter to both the union, the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers' Union, and le­gal coun­sel for ac­tion. She pre­vi­ous­ly held the mar­ket­ing man­ag­er po­si­tion of the Ra­dio Di­vi­sion at Guardian Me­dia Ltd. Calls to the chair­man's cell­phone went unan­swered and a voice mes­sage left was not re­turned. A call al­so was made to chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ken Ali who asked to be called lat­er on in the day. When con­tact­ed lat­er in the af­ter­noon his phone al­so went to voice­mail. Stone was the head of the As­so­ci­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Me­dia (AIM) work­ers formed last year from which he re­signed to take up the po­si­tion at CN­MG.