The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) has ter­mi­nat­ed its brand am­bas­sadors pro­gramme as part of its cost-cut­ting ini­tia­tives in light of the coun­try's eco­nom­ic down­turn and ac­cord­ing to its act­ing cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Chris­tine Pun­nett the com­pa­ny is tak­ing a "num­ber of ini­tia­tives to ra­tio­nalise its ex­pen­di­ture" which will re­sult in dou­ble-dig­it sav­ings.

Over the past two months the new NGC board, chaired by Ger­ry Brooks, took a num­ber of cost-cut­ting ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing a freeze on hir­ing and salaries, re­duced staff bonus­es and cut­back of ex­pens­es on the an­nu­al staff Christ­mas par­ty.

The brand am­bas­sadors pro­gramme was con­cep­tu­alised un­der the pre­vi­ous board, chaired by Roopc­hand Chadeesingh, and was launched in 2014 with some of the coun­try's top sport­ing per­son­al­i­ties re­tained to en­cour­age cit­i­zens to make the switch to the cheap­er, clean­er com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG) fu­el.

Both par­ties were to ben­e­fit. The brand am­bas­sadors–crick­eters Daren Bra­vo, Anisa Mo­hammed, De­nesh Ramdin and world cham­pi­on hur­dler Je­hue Gor­don–were to help sell the CNG con­cept and they were in turn paid a month­ly stipend.

Pun­nett con­firmed to the GML En­ter­prise Desk that, "NGC ter­mi­nat­ed its brand am­bas­sador pro­gramme in 2015."

For­mer brand am­bas­sadors told the GML En­ter­prise Desk that they were "sur­prised" that the pro­gramme was ter­mi­nat­ed "so soon."

They were paid a month­ly stipend of over $10,000 as part of the ini­tia­tive to en­cour­age mo­torists to make the switch to CNG. They said the mon­ey was used to off­set the cost of train­ing to en­hance their per­for­mance on the sport­ing field.

How­ev­er, they were told in late De­cem­ber last year that the pro­gramme was be­ing ter­mi­nat­ed with ef­fect from De­cem­ber 31. They con­ced­ed that it was up to the com­pa­ny to de­ter­mine what strate­gies it want­ed to pur­sue.

Ramdin told the GML En­ter­prise Desk he was in Aus­tralia when he was con­tact­ed and in­formed that the pro­gramme was be­ing ter­mi­nat­ed. He said a let­ter was de­liv­ered to his moth­er two weeks ago and she was asked to sign as hav­ing re­ceived it.

He de­scribed the de­ci­sion to cut the pro­gramme as "quite strange," telling us that he felt the brand am­bas­sadors pro­gramme was "a good ini­tia­tive" and it was "un­for­tu­nate" that the pro­gramme was stopped.

Ramdin said he did not think that the stipend they were paid would have "ham­pered the com­pa­ny" but he said the com­pa­ny in­di­cat­ed they had no choice be­cause of the re­ces­sion.

Ramdin, who is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in the Nagi­co Su­per 50 Tour­na­ment, said he was "not stressed" over the de­ci­sion.

He and the oth­er brand am­bas­sadors said they felt good be­ing part of the ini­tia­tive to mar­ket the NGC/CNG brand and were grate­ful for the sup­port from NGC and for the op­por­tu­ni­ty of­fered to them.

They at­tend­ed CNG-re­lat­ed events when they were in the coun­try. While they have no idea how suc­cess­ful the pro­gramme was for NGC they told us that many of their friends ex­pressed an in­ter­est in con­vert­ing to CNG and some even pur­chased the Hon­da City which has dual ca­pac­i­ty of gaso­line and CNG.

Pun­nett did not re­spond to our query on the suc­cess of the pro­gramme but we were able to as­cer­tain that there is no plan to re­sume it any­time soon. She told us "a se­ries of new ini­tia­tives are in train as the group moves to open four new CNG sta­tions in 2016. Oth­er CNG ini­tia­tives are planned which will be an­nounced short­ly."

The de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate the pro­gramme was just one of the cost-cut­ting mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed by the com­pa­ny fol­low­ing the re­quest by Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley for state com­pa­nies to re­duce ex­pen­di­ture by sev­en per cent.

The com­pa­ny, ac­cord­ing to Pun­nett, "has em­barked on a num­ber of ini­tia­tives to ra­tio­nalise its ex­pen­di­tures with­in the group." She said: "These mea­sures are ex­pect­ed to re­alise dou­ble dig­it sav­ings in ex­pen­di­tures." She did not elab­o­rate.

Asked whether those ini­tia­tives would in­volve staff cuts Pun­nett said: "NGC recog­nis­es the un­prece­dent­ed de­cline in the last decade of com­mod­i­ty and nat­ur­al gas prices and will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion close­ly."

She con­firmed that the com­pa­ny planned to con­tin­ue its cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty pro­grammes, which over the years has lent its sup­port to a range of caus­es and as­sist­ed in the de­vel­op­men­tal needs of com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try, adding:

"Our CSR ini­tia­tives have tar­get­ed fence line com­mu­ni­ties and giv­en the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate, NGC will con­tin­ue its long-stand­ing tra­di­tion of work­ing with com­mu­ni­ties in a con­struc­tive man­ner."

GML EN­TER­PRISE DESK