Kali­fa Clyne

Se­nior man­agers at State-owned Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Ltd (GISL) are leav­ing the me­dia com­pa­ny.

The ex­o­dus comes amid un­cer­tain­ty over the gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tions for the or­gan­i­sa­tion, in­creas­ing cash flow is­sues and threats from sup­pli­ers to with­hold ser­vices.

The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands five se­nior man­agers have re­signed since ear­ly this year, in ad­di­tion to a re­duc­tion in staff from 120 to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70.

The com­pa­ny's ac­counts man­ag­er, a se­nior ac­coun­tant, an IT man­ag­er, an act­ing IT man­ag­er, in­ter­nal au­dit man­ag­er and oth­ers have re­signed due to un­cer­tain­ty over the fu­ture of GISL.

In June, 16 em­ploy­ees left the com­pa­ny as their con­tracts were not re­newed and of­fi­cials said their jobs had be­come re­dun­dant.

A source at GISL said the com­pa­ny was be­ing de­nied ser­vices by sup­pli­ers, and had huge amounts of debt, with one sup­pli­er is­su­ing a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter over non­pay­ment.

"The cash flow prob­lems aren't new. They ac­tu­al­ly be­gan un­der the last gov­ern­ment but things have be­come no­tice­ably worse.

"The news­room is vir­tu­al­ly non-ex­is­tent, the com­pa­ny is in a state of lim­bo as staff are un­sure whether the com­pa­ny will still be around in a week or a month," the source said.

Ques­tioned about the sit­u­a­tion at the state en­ter­prise yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Max­ie Cuffie said ow­ing sup­pli­ers was nor­mal in the course of busi­ness.

"Whether there is a cri­sis, GISL is a State-owned com­pa­ny. It re­ceives sub­ven­tions as per oblig­a­tions by the Gov­ern­ment. This is a year where the Gov­ern­ment and the Prime Min­is­ter pub­licly, on more than one oc­ca­sion, said the coun­try has faced low­ered rev­enues and has had to repri­ori­tise ex­pen­di­ture," Cuffie said.

GISL re­ceives an an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $18 mil­lion.

He said GISL was not im­mune to the chal­lenges be­ing faced by the econ­o­my.

He said in light of these chal­lenges, the Gov­ern­ment was ex­am­in­ing GISL, CN­MG and all State-owned com­pa­nies in an ef­fort to de­ter­mine what is the best for­mu­la to pro­ceed with de­liv­er­ing their ser­vices while keep­ing in mind fis­cal oblig­a­tions.

"As line min­is­ter for GISL and CN­MG I ex­pect us to de­ter­mine a way for­ward very soon."

Asked about GISL's mount­ing debt, Cuffie said the Gov­ern­ment was look­ing at the mat­ter.

An em­ploy­ee at the or­gan­i­sa­tion con­firmed to the Sun­day Guardian that em­ploy­ees were un­easy.

"Peo­ple are be­ing giv­en short-term con­tracts, some are three-month con­tracts, and every­one is look­ing to move on to find some kind of sta­bil­i­ty," said the em­ploy­ee.

One of the few de­part­ments still ac­tive in the or­gan­i­sa­tion is the digi­ti­sa­tion of me­dia archives.

The news­room staff has been cut. IT staff were re­duced from 12 in 2015 to four as mass res­ig­na­tions con­tin­ue. Ac­cord­ing to Cuffie, who is a for­mer CEO of GISL, a news­room was nev­er part of the com­pa­ny's man­date be­cause the com­pa­ny that was sup­posed to pro­duce news was Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG).

GISL's prob­lems come as the Gov­ern­ment pass­es the Ju­ly 2016 dead­line, which was rec­om­mend­ed by the board for rein­te­gra­tion of the com­pa­ny in­to the Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (GISD.)

Fol­low­ing the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion, Cuffie told the Par­lia­ment about mis­man­age­ment of both GISL and the oth­er state me­dia com­pa­ny CN­MG. He spoke of a GISL CEO who was al­so hired as a con­sul­tant for a state com­pa­ny which bought him an SUV ve­hi­cle, and a CN­MG free­lancer col­lect­ing "four salaries" un­der the past Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) ad­min­is­tra­tion.,

He said GISL and CN­MG com­bined had spent $90 mil­lion in 2015, with $50 mil­lion spent on the "Gov­ern­ment Work­ing for You" ini­tia­tive.

Fol­low­ing this, a na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion on the role of state me­dia was ini­ti­at­ed by the board of the two or­gan­i­sa­tions, which was then head­ed by for­mer in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor He­len Dray­ton.

The board de­liv­ered a re­port to Cuffie which rec­om­mend­ed that the Gov­ern­ment dis­solve GISL, dis­pose of its tele­vi­sion sta­tion TV4, and cease all con­tract work.

The re­port rec­om­mend­ed that the core op­er­a­tions of GISL be rein­te­grat­ed with the old­er GISD.

It said GISL should be dis­solved as a lim­it­ed li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny and GISD re­struc­tured to co-or­di­nate the im­ple­men­ta­tion of gov­ern­ment's in­for­ma­tion pol­i­cy and pro­vide ser­vices aligned with that par­tic­u­lar func­tion, as well as to sup­port min­istries and de­part­ments with the dis­sem­i­na­tion of in­for­ma­tion.

CEO mum

GISL CEO John Bar­ry re­fused to com­ment about the state of the com­pa­ny or the ex­o­dus of em­ploy­ees and re­ferred all ques­tions to GISL Chair­man Tim­o­thy Af­fon­so. Af­fon­so re­placed Dray­ton af­ter her res­ig­na­tion with­in months of ac­cept­ing chair­man­ship of the board. Yes­ter­day, the Sun­day Guardian called Af­fon­so's mo­bile num­ber nine times but re­ceived no re­sponse.