Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dave Tan­coo says he is in the dark over re­ports that Garvin Med­era, the air­line's longest-serv­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, has re­signed. 

CAL, mean­while, has so far been mum on the is­sue.

Ef­forts to con­tact Med­era have al­so been un­suc­cess­ful.

Lo­cal me­dia re­ports to­day said Med­era had ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion yes­ter­day. He went on va­ca­tion from Sep­tem­ber 8 and was ex­pect­ed to re­turn on Oc­to­ber 13. 

Nir­mala Ra­mai, chief op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer, re­mains act­ing CEO, at this time. 

How­ev­er, asked to com­ment di­rect­ly on the re­ports dur­ing a func­tion at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's, Tan­coo said he had no in­for­ma­tion on the mat­ter. 

“It is not the man­date of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to be so ad­vised and I have not been so ad­vised,” he said. 

Pressed fur­ther as the line min­is­ter of CAL, Tan­coo said he did not reach out to Med­era for con­fir­ma­tion. 

“I as­sume if he has re­signed, at some point I will be ad­vised and I have yet been ad­vised as such." 

In re­cent weeks, re­ports have been cir­cu­lat­ing on­line that Med­era had been sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing the out­come of an in­ter­nal re­view. The air­line de­bunked those re­ports, call­ing them “false” and not from “au­tho­rised sources."    

Med­era is cred­it­ed with lead­ing the air­line to op­er­a­tional prof­itabil­i­ty in 2018, 2023 and 2024. He spear­head­ed a fleet re­new­al ex­er­cise, swap­ping out old­er Boe­ing 737-800 NGs for new­er, more fu­el-ef­fi­cient Boe­ing 737-8 air­craft and leas­ing ad­di­tion­al ATR 72-600 air­craft.

The ATR fleet has made CAL’s ex­pan­sion in the re­gion pos­si­ble, as they’ve been used to con­nect the Eng­lish, Span­ish, Dutch and French Caribbean. 

But his tenure has not been with­out con­tro­ver­sy. In 2018, five months in­to the job, he was hauled be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee, where al­le­ga­tions of rule flout­ing and im­prop­er hir­ing prac­tices were lev­elled against him. Med­era al­so faced back­lash dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic when he re­ceived a $500,000 per­for­mance bonus at a time when the air­line was in a fight for its sur­vival and was forced to re­trench staff. Though part of his con­tract, the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to pay the bonus prompt­ed an out­cry in sev­er­al quar­ters.  

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands Med­era had been at odds with the new CAL board, head­ed by chair­man Rey­na Kow­lessar. Among the is­sues raised by the board was the com­pa­ny’s fail­ure to pro­vide au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults over the past nine years.