Yvonne Ba­boolal

Act­ing CEO of the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) Joycelin Har­g­reaves says no board mem­bers have re­signed as yet, as far as she knows. She said yes­ter­day: "I can't con­firm that. I have no knowl­edge of board mem­bers threat­en­ing to re­sign. That in­for­ma­tion has not reached my of­fice."

Har­g­reaves was re­spond­ing to ques­tions on a T&T Guardian re­port yes­ter­day that some CDA board mem­bers had said they planned to re­sign at a meet­ing late Wednes­day evening. Har­g­reaves said she was not aware of the meet­ing.

Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie said on Tues­day he had sent a note to Cab­i­net propos­ing the re­moval of the CDA board and was await­ing Cab­i­net's de­ci­sion. The min­is­ter's ac­tion came in the wake of con­tention be­tween sev­en board mem­bers and chair­man Dan­ny Solomon.

The con­tention grew af­ter news broke that the CDA had re­quest­ed the tele­phone records of a T&T Guardian re­porter to find out who in the or­gan­i­sa­tion leaked a sto­ry to her on a com­mer­cial trans­ac­tion. The dis­grun­tled fac­tion is al­so dis­pleased about oth­er mat­ters re­lat­ing to the run­ning of the CDA.

Giv­ing an up­date on the sta­tus of the board, Har­g­reaves said: "In­struc­tions of that na­ture would come from the line Min­is­ter. "From where we sit now, we still have a board. Any changes which would be deemed ap­pro­pri­ate would come from the min­is­ter."

Har­g­reaves al­so cleared the air on mis­in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing the job ti­tles of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T chair­man Ever­ald Snag­gs. "Snag­gs is not an em­ploy­ee of the CDA. He is not linked with the CDA," Har­g­reaves said.

She said he was a for­mer man­ag­er of se­cu­ri­ty and risk at the au­thor­i­ty but his term had end­ed. Snag­gs could not be reached for com­ment at his TSTT of­fice yes­ter­day and did not re­spond to re­quests to call the T&T Guardian ei­ther.

A well-placed TSTT source dis­closed, how­ev­er, that a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the leak­ing of the re­porter's tele­phone records was on­go­ing at the com­pa­ny. "The whole team is go­ing through a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the mat­ter," the source added.

Asked if TSTT planned to tight­en ac­cess to tele­phone records, he said ac­cess to records al­ready were tight­ened. "Since the pas­sage of the In­ter­cep­tion of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act 2010, new process­es were put in place to tight­en ac­cess to tele­phone records," he added.

The source al­so con­firmed Snag­gs was not em­ployed with the CDA and promised to con­tact the chair­man about the T&T Guardian's re­quest to in­ter­view him. Un­der the The Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act of 2011, down­load­ing some­one's pri­vate in­for­ma­tion may be an of­fence. "Go­ing on the com­put­er, ac­cess­ing some­one's in­for­ma­tion, print­ing it, may be an of­fence un­der the act," a le­gal source re­quest­ing anonymi­ty said yes­ter­day.

The act pro­vides for the pro­tec­tion of a per­son's right to pri­va­cy and es­tab­lish­es the right to main­tain sen­si­tive per­son­al in­for­ma­tion as pri­vate, con­fi­den­tial and per­son­al. It al­so states gen­er­al pri­va­cy prin­ci­ples are ap­plic­a­ble to all in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions (pub­lic or pri­vate). A ma­jor prin­ci­ple is that in­for­ma­tion must be col­lect­ed for a spec­i­fied pur­pose, must be ac­cu­rate, com­plete and up to date and col­lect­ed, used or dis­closed on­ly af­ter con­sent is giv­en.

It must al­so be col­lect­ed fair­ly and legal­ly and lim­it­ed to what was nec­es­sary. The act ap­plies to in­di­vid­u­als and pri­vate and pub­lic or­gan­i­sa­tions that han­dle, store or process per­son­al in­for­ma­tion. The act states it is an of­fence to will­ful­ly dis­close per­son­al in­for­ma­tion. Penal­ties in­clude fines of up to $100,000 or up to five years im­pris­on­ment for in­di­vid­u­als and fines of up to ten per cent of an­nu­al re­turns for com­pa­nies.