KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) has called for the re­moval of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) chair­man Kern Dass, ac­cus­ing him of pre­sid­ing over a gov­er­nance cri­sis and at­tempt­ing to make for­mer act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Keino Cox the “fall guy” in the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing a pro­posed $49 mil­lion call cen­tre con­tract.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, CWU sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer said ac­count­abil­i­ty for the pro­posed three-year Dig­i­tal First Call Cen­tre So­lu­tion con­tract with Hum­ming Bird Hold­ings Ltd should not be nar­rowed to the ac­tions of the for­mer act­ing CEO, but should ex­tend to TSTT’s gov­er­nance frame­work and those re­spon­si­ble for over­see­ing the pro­cure­ment process.

“How could the Hum­ming Bird AI call cen­tre may­hem just fall in­to the hands of the CEO?” Ogeer asked. “This is shift­ing the goal­posts and cre­at­ing a po­si­tion for a fall guy.”

Her com­ments fol­low last week’s dis­clo­sure that TSTT halt­ed the pro­posed $49 mil­lion arrange­ment pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion af­ter con­cerns were raised that it had not been brought be­fore the com­pa­ny’s board for man­age­ment con­sid­er­a­tion.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has since said the mat­ter formed part of the board’s de­lib­er­a­tions when it de­cid­ed not to re­new Cox’s ap­point­ment as act­ing CEO.

Reza Ho­sein has since been ap­point­ed act­ing CEO.

Ogeer ques­tioned whether the pro­posed pro­cure­ment com­plied with TSTT’s gov­er­nance frame­work, ask­ing whether the trans­ac­tion fell with­in man­age­ment’s del­e­gat­ed au­thor­i­ty, whether it was ever pre­sent­ed to the board, and what ap­provals and pro­cure­ment re­views pre­ced­ed the pro­posed award.

“We de­serve an an­swer, and we are ask­ing it di­rect­ly of the line min­is­ter.”

She al­so chal­lenged the chair­man’s han­dling of the mat­ter, al­leg­ing that he had dis­tanced him­self from con­tro­ver­sial de­ci­sions while tak­ing own­er­ship of favourable ones.

Ogeer re­ferred to what she de­scribed as a pre­vi­ous $400,000 re­treat, claim­ing Padarath had said he was not in­formed about it. She ar­gued that if gov­er­nance con­cerns had re­sult­ed in changes at oth­er state en­ter­pris­es, sim­i­lar stan­dards should ap­ply at TSTT.

“We are call­ing for the re­moval of Kern Dass. He is not fit for pur­pose as the chair­man of TSTT.”

Ogeer al­so al­leged that Dass “seems to have chal­lenges with ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance” and sug­gest­ed po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions may have in­flu­enced his con­tin­ued tenure as chair­man.

Padarath hit back at Ogeer’s crit­i­cism, de­scrib­ing her com­ments as “delu­sion­al, loud and bois­ter­ous fab­ri­ca­tions” and ac­cus­ing her of us­ing them to de­flect from what he de­scribed as the re­al is­sue.

He al­so al­leged that Ogeer had been com­mu­ni­cat­ing pri­vate­ly with Dass and oth­ers in an ef­fort to “di­vide and con­quer,” say­ing: “We are on to her.”

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Padarath re­ject­ed the union’s sug­ges­tion that Cox was be­ing made a “fall guy,” ac­cus­ing the CWU of at­tempt­ing to “sani­tise the im­age and con­duct” of per­sons who, he al­leged, took uni­lat­er­al de­ci­sions that cre­at­ed the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.

He de­fend­ed Dass’ record, cred­it­ing the chair­man and board with TSTT’s fi­nan­cial progress and de­scrib­ing Dass as a per­son with “a tremen­dous amount of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence,” par­tic­u­lar­ly in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor.

Padarath said he had spo­ken with Dass and new­ly ap­point­ed act­ing CEO Reza Ho­sein, who con­firmed that a “full and com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion” had been launched in­to the mat­ter.

He said he ex­pect­ed de­tails from the in­ves­ti­ga­tion by next week and re­it­er­at­ed his sup­port for Dass, stat­ing: “As long as Mr Dass is will­ing to serve, he will have my sup­port.”

The con­tro­ver­sy stems from a pro­posed con­tract which, ac­cord­ing to a re­cent re­port, fol­lowed a se­lec­tive re­quest for pro­pos­als is­sued in No­vem­ber last year. Four com­pa­nies sub­mit­ted bids be­fore the pro­cure­ment process was re­port­ed­ly changed to a sin­gle-source se­lec­tion, with Hum­ming Bird Hold­ings Ltd ul­ti­mate­ly se­lect­ed for the pro­posed award.

Re­spond­ing to a news re­port last week, Dass said the pro­posed arrange­ment “was not brought be­fore the board for con­sid­er­a­tion by man­age­ment” and that the board had launched an im­me­di­ate re­view in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the pro­cure­ment. He said the find­ings would be re­port­ed to the line min­istry and any oth­er rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties if nec­es­sary.