Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Prof An­tho­ny Joseph whose job spec is the cen­tre of con­flict at the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (OS­HA) had been af­ford­ed the lux­u­ry of a month­ly $10,000 cel­lu­lar cred­it lim­it as part of his hefty pay pack­age. The 'phone deal', which last­ed three months be­fore is­sues were raised, is one of the sev­er­al vi­o­la­tions sur­round­ing the em­ploy­ment of Joseph since he joined the Agency in Oc­to­ber last year.

It was in a No­vem­ber 3 e-mail that OS­HA's in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy (IT) project man­ag­er Ronell Noel in­formed Joseph of the mo­bile cred­it lim­it. The con­fi­den­tial e-mail ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian stat­ed: "As dis­cussed, I am en­gag­ing Dig­i­cel to in­crease your cred­it lim­it to $10,000." Sun­day Guardian's in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that no ap­proval was grant­ed for the mo­bile cred­it fa­cil­i­ty.

Fur­ther prob­ing found that a memo, is­sued on Jan­u­ary 18, frowned on the de­ci­sion to grant the mo­bile cred­it fa­cil­i­ty to the ad­min­is­tra­tive con­sul­tant. Con­tents of the memo stat­ed: "In­ter­nal au­dit was in­formed by IT project man­ag­er that a cel­lu­lar de­vice, to­geth­er with a cred­it lim­it of $10,000, was as­signed. The signed tele­phone pol­i­cy, to­geth­er with the rel­e­vant ap­provals for cred­it lim­it and in­clu­sion on the cor­po­rate plan, was not pre­sent­ed for au­dit ex­am­i­na­tion."

Fol­low­ing the warn­ing, Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that on Feb­ru­ary 2–three months lat­er-Joseph in­struct­ed Noel to re­vise his cred­it lim­it to $5,000 with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. How­ev­er, fail­ure to get the nec­es­sary ap­proval for such a mo­bile fa­cil­i­ty re­sult­ed in the Car­ol Bha­gan-Khan-led board tak­ing a de­ci­sion to re­duce the mo­bile lim­it to $500.

Ac­cord­ing to Cab­i­net pol­i­cy re­gard­ing cel­lu­lar phones, Joseph does not qual­i­fy for any mo­bile fa­cil­i­ty be­cause he is not an em­ploy­ee of OS­HA. The ap­proved pol­i­cy for mo­bile ser­vices clear­ly states that cel­lu­lar phones are to be is­sued to gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, per­ma­nent sec­re­taries, deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­taries, heads of de­part­ments, deputy heads of de­part­ments, heads of di­vi­sions and such em­ploy­ees deemed by the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, head of de­part­ment or statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ty to re­quire the use of cel­lu­lar phones based on demon­strat­ed need and job func­tion.

The pol­i­cy fur­ther states that lim­its may be set as to the max­i­mum ex­pen­di­ture in re­spect to tele­phone calls.

OS­HA lies...board cre­at­ing po­si­tions

Con­trary to Bha­gan–Khan's de­nial in last Sun­day's Guardian that Joseph was hired as the ad­min­is­tra­tive con­sul­tant of OS­HA, there are doc­u­ments that show oth­er­wise. A copy of his con­tract ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian and signed by Bha­gan-Khan re­vealed that Joseph was hired at a month­ly fee of $65,000 to per­form the du­ties of an ad­min­is­tra­tive con­sul­tant ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 17.

An ex­cerpt from the con­tract states: "The Au­thor­i­ty shall hire the con­trac­tor and the con­trac­tor shall dili­gent­ly and faith­ful­ly per­form the du­ties of ad­min­is­tra­tion con­sul­tant in ac­cor­dance with the terms of ref­er­ence an­nexed here­to as ap­pen­dix I in the OS­HA dur­ing the term of his con­tract and will act in all re­spects in ac­cor­dance with in­struc­tions and/or di­rec­tions giv­en to him by the chair­man of OS­HA or such oth­er of­fi­cer du­ly au­tho­rized by him."

Ac­cord­ing to the con­tract his du­ties are list­ed as:

• Man­ag­ing the re­cruit­ment of per­son­nel to the OSH Agency

• As­sess­ing the ser­vices of the OSH Agency to OSH satel­lite of­fices in San Fer­nan­do, Point Fortin and To­ba­go

• Guid­ing the re­lo­ca­tion ef­forts of the head of­fice and To­ba­go satel­lite of­fice of the OSH Agency

• Man­ag­ing the day-to-day ad­min­is­tra­tion of the OSH Agency, in­clud­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion sys­tems with re­spect to the fi­nances, in con­sul­ta­tion with the Min­istry of Labour and Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment

• Ini­ti­at­ing the re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Agency to fo­cus on car­ry­ing out its core func­tions and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for work­place safe­ty, health and well­ness in T&T (reg­u­la­to­ry, pre­ven­ta­tive, in­ves­tiga­tive, in­for­ma­tion­al and ad­vi­so­ry)

• Fa­cil­i­tat­ing the re­view and re­vi­sion of the strate­gic plan and op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dures for the OSH Agency

• Ad­vis­ing the Au­thor­i­ty on ac­tions/mea­sures to im­prove op­er­a­tions and im­ple­ment­ing as ap­proved

Fi­nan­cial doc­u­ments showed that the Min­istry of Labour and Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment, which falls un­der the purview of line min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod, ap­proved pay­ment for the con­sul­tan­cy ser­vice for the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 17 to No­vem­ber 16. Fur­ther prob­ing re­vealed that Joseph is present­ly be­ing paid from the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme-a fund as­signed to cap­i­tal projects.

How­ev­er, for pay­ment of ser­vices con­duct­ed dur­ing Jan­u­ary 17 to Feb­ru­ary 16, Joseph list­ed his job ti­tle as chief ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor to OS­HA. Un­der OS­HA's or­gan­i­sa­tion­al chart the po­si­tion of chief ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor does not ex­ist. Ap­proval has on­ly been grant­ed for the po­si­tion of ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor.

Ac­cord­ing to the 91st re­port of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) the of­fice of ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor was cre­at­ed by Sec­tion: 69(2) of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act, No 1 of 2004. The rec­om­mend­ed re­mu­ner­a­tion arrange­ments for the of­fice of ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor is list­ed as fol­lows in the re­port:

Col­lect­ing top dol­lars

Salary: $25,700 month­ly Trans­port fa­cil­i­ties:

(i) A max­i­mum loan of $200,000 at a rate of in­ter­est of six per cent per an­num re­payable over a pe­ri­od of six years to fa­cil­i­tate the pur­chase of ei­ther -

• A new mo­tor ve­hi­cle with ex­emp­tion from Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Tax (MVT) lim­it­ed to the amount payable on a ve­hi­cle with an en­gine ca­pac­i­ty of 1999cc and ex­emp­tion from Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) to a min­i­mum of $36,000

• A used mo­tor ve­hi­cle with ex­emp­tion from spe­cial MVT lim­it­ed to the max­i­mum amount payable in re­spect of MVT on a ve­hi­cle and ex­emp­tion from VAT to a max­i­mum of $36,000

(ii) A loan to cov­er the cost of mo­tor ve­hi­cle in­sur­ance pre­mi­um at a rate of in­ter­est of six per cent per an­num

(iii) A max­i­mum loan of $20,000 at a rate of in­ter­est of six per cent per an­num to ef­fect re­pairs to a mo­tor ve­hi­cle

(iv) A month­ly trans­porta­tion al­lowance of $3,250

Ser­vice al­lowance: $4,500 per month

Sub­sis­tence al­lowance:

(i) $130 per day when trav­el­ling on of­fi­cial busi­ness be­yond a ra­dius of 16 kilo­me­tres from of­fi­cial head­quar­ters, and where it is nec­es­sary to pur­chase a meal(s).

(ii) When on of­fi­cial du­ty in To­ba­go, the of­fice hold­er to be el­i­gi­ble for ho­tel ac­com­mo­da­tion and meals, as nec­es­sary. In the ab­sence of the pro­vi­sion of any meal(s) to be paid $130 per day

(iii) For trav­el abroad on of­fi­cial busi­ness, US$100 per day, once not in re­ceipt of oth­er al­lowances for over­seas trav­el such as those payable un­der Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Cir­cu­lar No 2 dat­ed April 7, 2006

Hous­ing al­lowance: $6,450

Oth­er ben­e­fits in­clude an en­ter­tain­ment al­lowance that is grant­ed by an of­fi­cial en­ter­tain­ment vote un­der the con­trol of the OS­HA. Un­der the pub­lic ser­vice guide­lines, salaries are ne­go­ti­at­ed through the Chief Per­son­al Of­fi­cer (CPO). There is no CPO ap­proval to pay a salary of $65,000 at OS­HA.

Ac­cord­ing to the OSH Act the po­si­tion of ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor is to be de­cid­ed by the SRC. The salary is list­ed at $45,000. The Act states clear­ly that the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor is the ac­count­ing of­fi­cer of the OS­HA. What this means is that with­out the po­si­tion be­ing filled the per­son that has the pow­er over the Agency is the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary.

How­ev­er, in a No­vem­ber 8 let­ter the act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Joy My­ers in­formed Joseph that with im­me­di­ate ef­fect he was grant­ed au­thor­i­ty to ap­prove ex­pen­di­ture not ex­ceed­ing $50,000.

The let­ter stat­ed:

(a) The funds en­trust­ed to your care are prop­er­ly safe­guard­ed and ap­plied on­ly to the pur­pos­es in­tend­ed by Par­lia­ment

(b) All pro­cure­ment process­es are trans­par­ent and meet the re­quire­ments of the Ex­che­quer and Au­dit Act.

Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that the del­e­gat­ing au­thor­i­ty was re­voked from OS­HA's deputy di­rec­tor of ad­min­is­tra­tion, Car­olyn San­cho, who pre­vi­ous­ly was grant­ed pow­er to ap­prove ex­pen­di­ture to the sum of $20,000.

Tax eva­sion

Even as ad­min­is­tra­tive con­sul­tant, Joseph (now chief ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor), was not com­ply­ing with the statu­to­ry guide­lines. Doc­u­ments ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian show that his in­voic­es, sub­mit­ted for pay­ment for ser­vices pro­vid­ed, list on­ly Na­tion­al In­sur­ance and Board of In­land Rev­enue num­bers.

Ac­cord­ing to the list of ex­empt ser­vices list­ed in the VAT Act if an in­di­vid­ual has in­come of $65,000 he/she has to have a tax in­voice and VAT reg­is­tra­tion num­ber. The VAT Act states if in­come is over $200,000 per an­num a per­son/com­pa­ny is re­quired to reg­is­ter for VAT and file a VAT re­turn. At­tempts to con­tact Bha­gan-Khan proved fu­tile yes­ter­day.

Joseph mum

How­ev­er, when Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed Joseph he re­fused to an­swer any ques­tion re­lat­ing to his em­ploy­ment or con­tract. Asked if he ever pro­vid­ed con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices to OS­HA, Joseph replied: "Lis­ten to me care­ful­ly. If you have some­thing that you think is valid, do what­ev­er you want with it. Why call me to ver­i­fy any­thing? Write what­ev­er you want! I do not have to an­swer to you. I have no an­swer for any­thing."

Min­is­ter to look in­to mat­ter

Line min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod al­so of­fered no com­ment when asked about the con­flict­ing re­ports sur­round­ing Joseph's em­ploy­ment. Asked to clar­i­fy whether Joseph was hired as the ad­min­is­tra­tive con­sul­tant or chief ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, McLeod replied: "I can­not do that now. You will need to call me at the of­fice on Mon­day."

When McLeod was told that the po­si­tion of chief ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor does not ex­ist on the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al chart of OS­HA, he said: "I am not fa­mil­iar with that but on Mon­day I am go­ing to check all the de­tails and I would have a re­sponse then."