SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali

@guardian.co.tt

Neil Ram­s­ingh is out as a di­rec­tor on the Pa­lo Seco Agri­cul­tur­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (PSAEL) board.

This marks Ram­s­ingh’s sec­ond de­par­ture from a state en­ti­ty in re­cent weeks.

His ex­it from PSAEL came af­ter he re­signed as CEO of the state-owned Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB) in Sep­tem­ber. Con­tact­ed last Fri­day, Ram­s­ingh con­firmed he had stepped down from PSAEL’s five-mem­ber board.

“I stepped down a while now. Why are you ask­ing me all of this?” Asked the rea­son for his de­par­ture from the state com­pa­ny, Ram­s­ingh replied, “Why are you ask­ing me my per­son­al in­fo? That is not your busi­ness.”

Last June, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Ravi Rati­ram hand­ed the board mem­bers their let­ters of ap­point­ment, en­trust­ing them with ex­e­cut­ing the min­istry’s strate­gic goals for na­tion­al agri­cul­ture.

PSAEL is a spe­cial-pur­pose state en­ter­prise com­pa­ny man­dat­ed to man­age and de­vel­op state lands for agri­cul­tur­al and oth­er pro­duc­tive us­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

Led by chair­man Dan­ny Ma­haraj, the board con­sist­ed of deputy chair­man Ra­jiv Chaitoo and di­rec­tors Ram­s­ingh, Shan­ty Boodram and Am­bereesh Ram.

How­ev­er, PSAEL’s web­site showed that the board’s com­po­si­tion had been re­duced from five to three mem­bers, with Ram­s­ingh and Chaitoo’s names and pho­tographs be­ing re­moved, leav­ing on­ly the pro­files of Ma­haraj, Boodram and Ram.

The web­site al­so showed a change in lead­er­ship, with Boodram step­ping in­to the role of vice chair­man, pre­vi­ous­ly held by Chaitoo.

Af­ter join­ing the PSAEL board, Ram­s­ingh was ap­point­ed by the Gov­ern­ment to lead the ADB in May 2026.

How­ev­er, four months af­ter tak­ing up the bank’s top po­si­tion, Ram­s­ingh re­signed on Sep­tem­ber 8, with­out giv­ing a rea­son for his sud­den de­par­ture. He promised to re­main ful­ly sup­port­ive of the Gov­ern­ment and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar.

With­in hours of his res­ig­na­tion, the CEO po­si­tion was ad­ver­tised. Wendy Sam­sun­dar-Be­har­ry is act­ing as the ADB’s CEO.

Ram­s­ingh’s ex­it from the bank fol­lowed grow­ing scruti­ny over his pre­vi­ous em­ploy­ment.

It was con­firmed that Ram­s­ingh had been ter­mi­nat­ed from Guardian Life of the Caribbean in April. A pub­lic no­tice by Guardian Life of the Caribbean Ltd stat­ed that Ram­s­ingh was no longer a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the com­pa­ny and was not au­tho­rised to trans­act any busi­ness on its be­half.

On Oc­to­ber 2, dur­ing a Cab­i­net re­align­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar trans­ferred PSAEL from Rati­ram’s port­fo­lio to Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein.

As part of that re­align­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter al­so shift­ed over­sight of the ADB from Rati­ram to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo.

Hav­ing sought the UNC’s nom­i­na­tion for the Fyz­abad con­stituen­cy ahead of last year’s gen­er­al elec­tion, Ram­s­ingh was screened at the UNC’s head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas as a prospec­tive can­di­date in Jan­u­ary 2025.

Last Fri­day, Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Boodram for a com­ment on her el­e­vat­ed role as vice-chair­man, but she ad­vised that we di­rect all ques­tions to Ma­haraj.

Chaitoo was al­so asked if he was no longer a mem­ber of the board, but the call was met with an abrupt dis­con­nec­tion.

A sub­se­quent at­tempt to reach Chaitoo was un­suc­cess­ful.

Guardian Me­dia al­so What­sApped a list of ques­tions to Ho­sein, but there was no re­sponse.

On Au­gust 16, Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed that there were 67 de­par­tures from State boards, pub­lic of­fices in 14 months.