SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh wants the Board of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny to tell the na­tion how many T&T na­tion­als were short­list­ed for the job of CEO at the State-owned oil and gas com­pa­ny.

The Op­po­si­tion MP made the call days af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the base salary of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um’s new CEO Erik Kesku­la at $180,000 per month.

In­clu­sive of the hefty pay pack­age, Kesku­la will al­so re­ceive a re­lo­ca­tion al­lowance of $12,600 a month, val­ue of hous­ing up to US$5,000 a month, a ve­hi­cle main­tained by Her­itage dur­ing pro­ba­tion, and sub­se­quent to that ve­hi­cle pur­chase at val­ue up to $700,000, and a com­ple­tion bonus of $180,000 payable at the end of the six-month pro­ba­tion.

Speak­ing at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress press con­fer­ence on Sun­day, In­dars­ingh told re­porters that Kesku­la will re­ceive a to­tal pack­age in ex­cess of $200,000 month­ly.

He said the Gov­ern­ment may ar­gue that Kesku­la’s salary is in line with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards and bench­marks.

“I want to make it ab­solute­ly clear that the UNC has noth­ing per­son­al against this CEO des­ig­nate,” he said.

How­ev­er, he said it was the UNC’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to get an­swers sur­round­ing his hir­ing.

“We have to ask how many Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans were short­list­ed for this par­tic­u­lar job at Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um. Were they short­list­ed by the board of di­rec­tors of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um? We want to be aware of the list of can­di­dates who were short­list­ed and whether the se­lec­tion of this com­pen­sa­tion pack­age was ap­proved by the board of di­rec­tors.”

In­dars­ingh said the UNC wants to find out if the se­lec­tion process was done by a re­cruit­ment agency of lo­cal or in­ter­na­tion­al re­pute.

And if it was un­der­tak­en by a re­cruit­ment com­pa­ny, how much did it cost tax­pay­ers?

“A cushy and hefty com­pen­sa­tion pack­age has been ap­proved. And at the same time, this Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to spit in the faces of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and pub­lic ser­vants telling them that this is a gua­va sea­son, we can­not give you more than four per cent.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment has been telling pub­lic ser­vants four per cent is good for them against a back­drop of ris­ing food in­fla­tion.

In­dars­ingh al­so touched on the 137 Caribbean Dock­yard and En­gi­neer­ing Ser­vices Ltd (Cari­doc) work­ers who will be laid off for 90 days, from June 1 to Au­gust 30.

He said if the econ­o­my has been im­prov­ing as the Gov­ern­ment has been claim­ing, why are work­ers be­ing con­sis­tent­ly sent home.

“I am warn­ing the Cari­doc work­ers that their even­tu­al dis­missal is com­ing...the Gov­ern­ment is set­ting them up and af­ter 90 days in fur­lough by this Gov­ern­ment there will be no fu­ture for them and they will have to hold this Gov­ern­ment ac­count­able be­cause of their in­com­pe­tence, lead­er­ship and lack of vi­sion.”