Shal­iza Has­sanali

Court­ney Mc­Nish, one of the di­rec­tors of the in­ter­im board of Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) whose ap­point­ment was with­drawn short­ly af­ter he was ap­point­ed on Fri­day, feels it was done in the best in­ter­est of the air­line.A state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day said that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai with­drew Mc­Nish from the board.

Ac­cord­ing to Howai, "Im­me­di­ate­ly as in­for­ma­tion about Mr Mc­Nish's pre­vi­ous tenure at CAL came to light, I act­ed to with­draw his name on Fri­day af­ter­noon as I have every in­ten­tion of en­sur­ing that the board has the full con­fi­dence and faith of all stake­hold­ers and is fo­cused on achiev­ing its very clear man­date."Hav­ing worked as CAL's vice pres­i­dent of hu­man re­source on a one-year con­tract which end­ed in Ju­ly of 2009, Mc­Nish ad­mit­ted that his for­mer po­si­tion with the com­pa­ny could have "pos­si­bly" been a con­flict of in­ter­est.

"I have been re­ceiv­ing calls and e-mails from peo­ple in the com­pa­ny...that may not be nec­es­sar­i­ly a good way to start."Mc­Nish said his name came up as a di­rec­tor as Howai was "look­ing for pro­fes­sion­als with a cer­tain amount of ex­per­tise, giv­en the per­for­mance of the last board."Mc­Nish ad­mit­ted that he spoke at lengths with Howai yes­ter­day. "The dis­cus­sion was very am­i­ca­ble."He said he had some ini­tial con­cerns when he was ap­proached to serve.

He said the con­cerns were his knowl­edge of the state of af­fairs of the air­line, hav­ing links with­in the com­pa­ny, and the fact that peo­ple may be tempt­ed to come to him di­rect­ly, which can ham­per the board's op­er­a­tions. "You know the pol­i­tics of these boards, it is a very chal­leng­ing board."

At­tor­ney: Back­ground checks on di­rec­tors manda­to­ry

At­tor­ney Nyree Al­fon­so, giv­ing a per­spec­tive on the mat­ter, said back­ground checks on all di­rec­tors are now manda­to­ry."The di­rec­tors in the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions are treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. We have a high­er stan­dard that we have to meet. We have to pass a fit and prop­er test."Al­fon­so said that tra­di­tion­al­ly be­ing an em­ploy­ee in a com­pa­ny and com­ing back to serve had not been an is­sue.

"Twen­ty years ago I don't think any­one would have giv­en much thought in putting a for­mer em­ploy­ee to sit on a board. I think we have be­come a lit­tle wis­er."Al­fon­so said one of the is­sues with CAL will be re­struc­tur­ing its hu­man re­source."It may be that Mc­Nish is not a suit­able per­son, not from a cor­po­rate gov­er­nance over­all view, but he had a unique po­si­tion where he would have formed a view on peo­ple in the com­pa­ny."