Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (TSTT) has ap­point­ed Reza Ho­sein as its act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, with the change com­ing af­ter the com­pa­ny’s board re­viewed the per­for­mance of for­mer act­ing CEO Keino Cox.

The ap­point­ment took ef­fect yes­ter­day, as TSTT an­nounced that Cox’s tenure as act­ing CEO had come to an end.

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath con­firmed this to Guardian Me­dia last night, say­ing he was ad­vised by TSTT chair­man Kern Dass that the board met yes­ter­day and af­ter “care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and re­view,” de­cid­ed to ap­point Ho­sein to lead the com­pa­ny.

Padarath al­so dis­missed re­ports that Cox had been es­cort­ed from TSTT’s premis­es by se­cu­ri­ty.

“I’m ad­vised that it was un­true,” Padarath said.

Ac­cord­ing to Padarath, Cox’s act­ing ap­point­ment for­mal­ly ex­pired on Ju­ly 31, with the board then ex­pect­ed to con­duct an ap­praisal and re­view of his per­for­mance be­fore de­cid­ing on the com­pa­ny’s lead­er­ship.

“The last time there was a res­o­lu­tion at the board, there was a time­stamp of Ju­ly 31st for the act­ing arrange­ment to ex­pire. It was left up to the board then to do an ap­praisal and a re­view of the per­for­mance of Mr Cox,” Padarath said.

He said the board sub­se­quent­ly in­formed him that, fol­low­ing its re­view, it had de­ter­mined Ho­sein was the best per­son to lead TSTT at this time.

Padarath said Cox had an “am­i­ca­ble ex­change” with mem­bers of the board be­fore leav­ing the com­pa­ny’s premis­es.

“It end­ed quite am­i­ca­bly,” the min­is­ter said, adding that there was no in­ci­dent in­volv­ing se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel es­cort­ing Cox from the build­ing.

The min­is­ter said he had not yet been told how long Ho­sein would re­main in the act­ing po­si­tion, but ex­pect­ed to re­ceive a brief­ing from the board to­day. He al­so said the board was ex­pect­ed to is­sue a state­ment to TSTT’s stake­hold­ers, man­age­ment and staff.

Guardian Me­dia sought a com­ment from Cox last night but calls to his phone went unan­swered. He re­placed Kent West­ern in Ju­ly last year, af­ter West­ern had stepped down. Then, Cox was serv­ing as as­sis­tant vice pres­i­dent of Emerg­ing Ser­vices and In­no­va­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from TSTT last evening, Ho­sein brings more than 27 years of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ex­pe­ri­ence to the po­si­tion and has held se­nior roles across sev­er­al ar­eas of TSTT, in­clud­ing tech­nol­o­gy, res­i­den­tial ser­vices, wire­less so­lu­tions, con­sumer sales, ser­vice de­liv­ery and as­sur­ance, and cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence and mar­ket­ing.

He holds a Mas­ter of Sci­ence in Elec­tri­cal En­gi­neer­ing – Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Sys­tems and a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing from The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. His ca­reer al­so in­cludes five years with Lu­cent Tech­nolo­gies in the Unit­ed States, where he worked in wire­less en­gi­neer­ing and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices.

Ac­cord­ing to TSTT, his im­me­di­ate fo­cus will be main­tain­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion­al mo­men­tum and ad­vanc­ing the com­pa­ny’s trans­for­ma­tion from a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny in­to a tech­nol­o­gy-fo­cused com­pa­ny.

Padarath said Ho­sein would al­so have to ad­dress in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is­sues while work­ing with the board to meet time­lines al­ready es­tab­lished for TSTT’s trans­for­ma­tion.

“Cer­tain­ly, first of all, as you are aware, there are is­sues re­gard­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions at the com­pa­ny,” Padarath said.

“And al­so, the com­pa­ny has been go­ing through a tran­si­tion from a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions-based com­pa­ny in­to a tech­nol­o­gy-based com­pa­ny.”

He said much of that work was al­ready ad­vanced and the new act­ing CEO would have to work close­ly with the board to com­plete it.

Asked whether the change in lead­er­ship was con­nect­ed to the on­go­ing Am­plia is­sue, Padarath said he could not con­firm that. (See sto­ry be­low)

“That I can’t say for cer­tain be­cause I have not re­ceived a full brief from the board as yet,” he said.

Padarath said the board had shared with him the re­sults of the ap­praisal con­duct­ed on Cox, but that oth­er rea­sons for the change had not yet been pro­vid­ed.

He said he ex­pect­ed to be in a po­si­tion to pro­vide fur­ther de­tails af­ter re­ceiv­ing the board’s full brief­ing.

TSTT chair­man Dass, in wel­com­ing Ho­sein’s ap­point­ment, said his ex­pe­ri­ence across tech­nol­o­gy, com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions and cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence would be im­por­tant as the com­pa­ny strength­ens its dig­i­tal ca­pa­bil­i­ties and pur­sues its Tel­co-to-Tech­Co trans­for­ma­tion.

Ho­sein said he was ho­n­oured to as­sume the role and would work with em­ploy­ees and stake­hold­ers to build on the work al­ready un­der­way, main­tain a fo­cus on cus­tomers and con­tin­ue ad­vanc­ing TSTT’s strate­gic pri­or­i­ties.

TSTT said it re­mains fo­cused on busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity, re­li­able ser­vice de­liv­ery and ex­e­cut­ing its strate­gic pri­or­i­ties as it moves for­ward.