Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Dis­as­ter man­age­ment co-or­di­na­tor Stephan Kishore, who hid his crim­i­nal back­ground to se­cure a job, is no longer in his post. The T&T Guardian learned Kishore, 26, met with Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry of­fi­cials last week.

Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day he un­der­stood he had re­lin­quished the post vol­un­tar­i­ly.Ram­bachan said he felt Kishore had made the right de­ci­sion, giv­en the cir­cum­stances.A min­istry of­fi­cial said Kishore was asked to va­cate the post at the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion which he had held since 2011.

The source added: "He was asked to go. The sit­u­a­tion was very em­bar­rass­ing and we thought it would be in the best in­ter­est of every­one if he left."No one was aware of his record and no at­tempt was made to bring it to the at­ten­tion of any­one."Kishore served 60 days in prison in the Unit­ed States in 2006 and was put on pro­ba­tion for three years for il­le­gal­ly pos­sess­ing a fake fed­er­al agent's iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card. He had to re­turn to his home in cen­tral Trinidad in 2009 af­ter be­ing un­able to ob­tain a green card be­cause of his crim­i­nal record.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian last month, Kishore ad­mit­ted he had re­mained tight-lipped about his past to get the job.

"Don't ask, don't tell," he said when asked why he had not been up front about his past in in­ter­views for the job.When the sto­ry broke, Ch­agua­nas may­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar was sur­prised at Kishore's rev­e­la­tions but dis­tanced him­self, say­ing Kishore had been hired by the min­istry.

Ram­bachan, in an ear­li­er in­ter­view, told the T&T Guardian the is­sue had caused him to ques­tion the cri­te­ria be­ing used to hire per­son­nel.He said the Hu­man Re­source De­part­ment at his min­istry might be at fault for not do­ing prop­er back­ground checks.

"I am con­tin­u­ing to take more than a pass­ing in­ter­est in this mat­ter be­cause I am very con­cerned about the qual­i­ty of checks that are be­ing done in the hir­ing of per­sons."While the bu­reau­cra­cy is known for de­tail, it al­so seems to fail it­self," he added.

Kishore could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.