Former People’s Partnership Planning Minister Dr Bhoe Tewarie said the $88 million debt being touted as the reason for staff cuts at the Chaguaramas Development Authority (CDA) was nothing more than a red herring.
Speaking on CNC3’s The Morning Brew with host Hema Ramkissoon yesterday, Tewarie said if the PNM administration had followed through with plans put in place under his tenure from 2012 to 2015, the CDA would be in a much better position.
In a release on Tuesday, the CDA announced plans to retrench some 68 employees, saying the CDA only needed 132 employees. The release stated the staff increase to 200 employees was done in 2010 under the PP government.
But Tewarie denied those claims, saying when the entity changed hands after the 2015 general election, a large number of employees were replaced by PNM party loyalists.
“I had that CDA under my operation since 2012 for three years and the PP had it for five years, we could not have padded people in that organisation to the extent that you would skew the organisation, it was just not possible,” Tewarie said. “In any case by the time they came in in 2015, they fired everybody from it, they fired the CEO, they fired a whole range of people down below. The pattern of this government is to get rid of anyone who is not aligned with the party or who they feel they can’t control,” he added.
Tewarie said if the PNM had continued with the development plan put in place under his tenure, which included plans for a Chaguaramas Causeway and a private/state-run car park, there would be no need for staff cuts.
He said the $88M debt was associated with the CDA’s pension fund and predated his tenure and that of the PP.
“The debt is explainable by things that could have been attended in the last four years, they could have paid the debt if they wanted to, restructured or reorganised the debt by putting money into the pension fund and that would have solved that problem.”
He said under his leadership, the CDA board signed on to the “biggest” leases it had ever seen in its existence. But when the administration changed hands, he said a lot of the leases were cancelled. Another issue, Tewarie pointed out, was the continuing leases of long-standing Chaguaramas tenants at “peppercorn” rates.
“Those things we had begun to renegotiate, the (current) government indicated that they would also renegotiate to increase the revenue for the CDA, I don’t know if anything has been done about that,” he said.
He accused the government of having no developmental plan for Chaguaramas which he compared to the island of Bermuda.
“I want to make this point that Chaguaramas is about exactly the size of the country called Bermuda whose per capita income is $60,000US per person, which means Chaguaramas has the potential to develop in a whole range of ways but there is no development strategy for Chaguaramas.”
The CDA said its decision to send home employees in the coming weeks was in a bid to reduce its expenditure and settle a more than $100 million debt.
In a statement to the media, the CDA explained that the salaries of its current staff accounted for 72 per cent of its income- twice what it used to be in 2010.
It said it had recorded $118 million in debt as of 2015.
TheCDA said it was unable to cover its maintenance and utility expenses despite having collected rental arrears for the majority of its errant tenants.
It added talks have begun with the respective unions about the plans for “staff rationalisation.”