Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Five man­agers of the Hu­man Re­sources De­part­ment at State-owned Petrotrin were sus­pend­ed yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of a four-year au­dit in­to a re­cruit­ment ex­er­cise.

Those sus­pend­ed were Ry­er­son Ba­goo, Fa­ree­da Mo­hammed, Gillian Cherotiere, Fran­ka Mo­hammed and Bian­ca At­tong.

Among the po­si­tions the man­agers held were head of staffing, head of HR tech­nol­o­gy and head of plan­ning poli­cies and con­trol.

The sus­pen­sions came days af­ter Petrotrin un­der­took a ma­jor or­gan­i­sa­tion­al shake-up in the face of falling oil prices and the hir­ing of for­mer com­mu­ni­ca­tion min­is­ter Neil Parsan­lal as CEO of Petrotrin's Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­grammes Ser­vices Ltd.

Con­tact­ed about the sus­pen­sions yes­ter­day, Petrotrin chair­man, An­drew Jupiter, said he had just left a meet­ing and ad­vised that the ques­tions be emailed to com­pa­ny's cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Gillian Fri­day, for a re­sponse.

"I am sure if you send those ques­tions right away you would get a re­sponse this af­ter­noon. If you can kind­ly do that... be­cause I am sure it is a man­age­ment de­ci­sion, if that is the case," Jupiter said.

In re­sponse to the emailed query, Joy An­toine, head of the ex­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions and brand­ing, who re­spond­ed on Fri­day's be­half, wrote: "In keep­ing with its con­tin­ued thrust to im­prove ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy, Petrotrin con­duct­ed an in­ter­nal au­dit of its re­cruit­ment process­es for the pe­ri­od 2012 to 2016."

An­toine said the re­cruit­ment au­dit was one of sev­er­al sched­uled au­dits to re­view the com­pa­ny's con­trol process­es in keep­ing with ap­proved poli­cies and pro­ce­dures.

"As a re­sult of the au­dit find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions and in keep­ing with stan­dard in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prac­tice, fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­volv­ing key em­ploy­ees are be­ing con­duct­ed. These in­ves­ti­ga­tions are cur­rent­ly un­der­way and as a re­sult, no fur­ther com­ments can be made at this time," An­toine ex­plained.

How­ev­er, a source told the T&T Guardian the five man­agers were sus­pend­ed for al­leged­ly re­cruit­ing for po­si­tions not on the es­tab­lish­ment, re­cruit­ing while a med­ical was pend­ing and re­cruit­ing in­di­vid­u­als who did not meet job spec­i­fi­ca­tions.

Orgni­sa­tion­al changes

In a cir­cu­lar, dat­ed June 15, signed by Petrotin's pres­i­dent, Fitzroy Hare­wood, and en­ti­tled "Or­gan­i­sa­tion­al Changes – Re­fin­ing and Mar­ket­ing Di­vi­sion", which was for­ward­ed to em­ploy­ees, it was stat­ed that the oil com­pa­ny was un­der­tak­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion­al changes and recog­nised the need to main­tain a very strong fo­cus on the com­ple­tion of the Ul­tra-Low Sul­phur Diesel (ULSD) plant for the long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty of its re­fin­ery and or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Ad­mit­ting that Petrotrin had been faced with pre­vi­ous chal­lenges, Hare­wood said a con­cert­ed ef­fort was need­ed to en­sure its suc­cess­ful com­mis­sion of the ULSD plant by the first quar­ter of 2018 or be­fore. The plant, ini­ti­at­ed in 2009, was in­com­plete.

As such, ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 1, Petrotrin saw the need to shift Johnathan Bar­den from the po­si­tion of cur­rent vice-pres­i­dent, re­fin­ing, to project man­age­ment con­sul­tant.

This moves comes even though Bar­den, in Petrotrin's per­for­mance up­date in April, boast­ed that "the com­pa­ny's re­fin­ery util­i­sa­tion had in­creased from ap­prox­i­mate­ly 38 per cent in 2014 to 70 per cent for the past two months."

Bar­den had al­so re­vealed that the com­pa­ny's crude oil pro­cess­ing had soared from the 2014 av­er­age of 112 kb­bl/day to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 140 kb­bl/day in 2015.

In a re­port to in­vestors, Bar­den al­so point­ed out that en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy in the re­fin­ery had im­proved by over 20 per cent, com­pared to the 2014 av­er­age, while flar­ing loss­es had been re­duced.

Bar­den's new du­ties en­tail sup­port­ing the ULSD projects, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­spect to the main project ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing the res­o­lu­tion of cur­rent en­gi­neer­ing and tech­ni­cal is­sues, com­ple­tion of con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ties, com­mis­sion­ing of the plant and han­dover to the re­fin­ing and mar­ket­ing di­vi­sion.

As­tor Har­ris, who has re­joined Petrotrin, is the com­pa­ny's new vice-pres­i­dent, re­fin­ing and mar­ket­ing.

Har­ris, who worked pre­vi­ous­ly as a process en­gi­neer at Petrotrin's Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, is cur­rent­ly a long-serv­ing vice-pres­i­dent of Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sor Ltd and an ex­pe­ri­enced chem­i­cal en­gi­neer.

Hare­wood stat­ed that in the con­text of Petrotrin's on­go­ing re­view of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 1 "the mar­ket­ing and train­ing sub-di­vi­sion will be rein­te­grat­ed in­to the Re­fin­ing Di­vi­sion and the com­bined di­vi­sion will again be known as the Re­fin­ing and Mar­ket­ing Di­vi­sion."

This di­vi­sion is be­ing led by Har­ris. Both Har­ris and Bar­den re­port to Hare­wood.

My CV speaks for it­self–ex-min­is­ter

For­mer min­is­ter Neil Parsan­lal yes­ter­day said he went through a rig­or­ous process be­fore he was hired at Petrotrin.

Parsan­lal, who served as MP for Lopinot-Bon Air West from 2007 to 2010 for the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment, said he was ap­point­ed to the post on June 13.

How­ev­er, Parsan­lal, who was re­cent­ly named as chair­man of the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems Au­thor­i­ty, said the po­si­tion and his ap­point­ment were ad­ver­tised.

He said he went through an ex­ten­sive in­ter­view process and had the nec­es­sary psy­cho­me­t­ric eval­u­a­tions done be­fore he was cho­sen.

Parsan­lal de­nied he "passed through the back door" to get the job.

"There is ab­solute­ly no truth to that. My CV will speak for it­self," he added.

Last June, Petrotrin's loss­es mul­ti­plied 11.2 times to reach US$168 mil­lion for the nine months end­ed June 30, com­pared to a US$15 mil­lion loss for the same pe­ri­od in 2014.

Sev­er­al calls to pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union An­cel Ro­get's cell­phone went unan­swered yes­ter­day.