The Chair­man of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, In­dar Ma­haraj, has been ap­point­ed as Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and is due to as­sume the po­si­tion on April 3. aharaj's ap­point­ment fol­lowed the de­ci­sion by the NGC board not to re­new the con­tract of 63-year-old, An­drew McIn­tosh, the hus­band of Pa­tri­cia McIn­tosh, an Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment. In an in­ter­view on Mon­day, Ma­haraj, 53, dis­missed the no­tion that pol­i­tics was in­volved in him get­ting the job at the NGC, main­tain­ing that he went through the process and did what he had to do in or­der to get the job.

"There was an ad­ver­tise­ment in the news­pa­per and I ap­plied for the job. I was in­ter­viewed by HRC and then that led to oth­er in­ter­views. I knew some of the oth­er peo­ple who had ap­plied and they are very tal­ent­ed so I had to be good and I did what I had to do to en­sure I got the first of­fer," said Ma­haraj. HRC As­so­ciates is the ex­ec­u­tive re­cruit­ment com­pa­ny run by Hol­lick Ra­jku­mar. The new NGC Pres­i­dent added that while he had po­lit­i­cal views, these were not set in stone and when he takes up the job ear­ly next month he will not be tak­ing the pol­i­tics to his work. He asked: "The last NGC pres­i­dent is mar­ried to a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, does that make him po­lit­i­cal? I don't think so."

Ma­haraj, speak­ing can­did­ly, said Trinidad and To­ba­go is a small coun­try and he, like many oth­er peo­ple, knows a lot of peo­ple in the pol­i­tics. "We live in Trinidad and To­ba­go which is a small so­ci­ety and it is in­evitable that we will know peo­ple in var­i­ous po­lit­i­cal par­ties. We can't get away from that. But my views are in­de­pen­dent be­cause I don't want any­one to feel that I will be go­ing in­to the NGC with poli­ci­cal views. My role at the NGC is sep­a­rate and apart from my po­lit­i­cal views and, as Pres­i­dent, I will have a man­date that I will work out with the board and the man­age­ment team. I was not born with UNC or PNM marked on my fore­head." Chair­man of the NGC Lar­ry Howai said there was no po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in the choice and he said it if hap­pened he was not in­volved.

"I can tell you with cer­tain­ty that no one spoke to me on this mat­ter be­cause they know how I feel about these things. I don't know if they spoke to any­one else but even if oth­er peo­ple se­lect­ed him for oth­er rea­sons I am com­fort­able with the choice be­cause I think it is a good choice." Howai told the Busi­ness Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

He said the process was a trans­par­ent one in which HRC short­list­ed six can­di­dates, four of whom were lo­cals and two for­eign­ers. He said the board ac­cept­ed the short­list and on­ly made one change which was that it would in­ter­view the lo­cals first. Howai said it was then on­to psy­cho­me­t­ric test­ing and there Ma­haraj scored bet­ter than the oth­ers in the test and in the ar­eas that were dealt with in the test.

Howai said those ar­eas in­clud­ed lead­er­ship, in­ter-per­son­al re­la­tion­ships and strate­gic think­ing with Ma­haraj scor­ing high marks in all those ar­eas and prov­ing to be the best fit for the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

In ad­dress­ing the fact that Ma­haraj had nev­er been a CEO in his life, and that there was at least one oth­er can­di­date who is cur­rent­ly a CEO, Howai said all the can­di­dates had strong tech­ni­cal knowl­edge but the NGC board want­ed some­one who could lead with­out the sup­port of a head of­fice. He point­ed to his own ex­pe­ri­ence as the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of state-owned bank­ing group, First Cit­i­zens, in which he does not have the sup­port of a head of­fice in one of the world's cap­i­tals as some of his com­peti­tors do. Howai said NGC need­ed some­one who could work with­out the kinds of struc­ture that a mul­ti-na­tion­al com­pa­ny might have. He said that the board worked hard to en­sure the de­ci­sion was trans­par­ent and it did its best.

On the ques­tion of why the board re­fused to re­new McIn­tosh's con­tract, he said the board was look­ing to the long-term fu­ture of the com­pa­ny and want­ed some­one who would be at the NGC for close to a decade. Ma­haraj, who cel­e­brat­ed his 53rd birth­day on Tues­day, is a grad­u­ate of Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege and at­tend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies where he ob­tained a Bach­e­lor's de­gree in Chem­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing. He sub­se­quent­ly earned a post-grad­u­ate diplo­ma in man­age­ment be­fore com­plet­ing a Mas­ters in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion with a spe­cial­iza­tion in fi­nance from Lin­coln Uni­ver­si­ty in the Unit­ed King­dom. Mr Ma­haraj is mar­ried with two chil­dren both of whom are at Uni­ver­si­ty. He will be 53 on Tues­day March 20th. Mr Ma­haraj's po­si­tion is a per­ma­nent one and could be at the helm of the NGC un­til 2019. The new NGC Pres­i­dent said he was well qual­i­fied to deal with the chal­lenges that face the com­pa­ny in­clud­ing the short­age in nat­ur­al gas to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, the at­tempts by the NGC to in­vest in Africa and the is­sue of a new gas pric­ing pol­i­cy.

Mr Ma­haraj said there were busi­ness chal­lenges every­day and he will have to sit with the board and the man­age­ment and plot a way for­ward. "I have my own ideas about how we can move for­ward but I want to first speak with my board and hear what the man­age­ment has to say and do a gap analy­sis be­fore I go for­ward," Ma­haraj told the Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view on Mon­day.

Ma­haraj said he has worked on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate since 1981 when he was em­ployed at the then Fer­trin plant which has now be­come PCS Ni­tro­gen. He said in the last 31 years he has gained sig­nif­i­cant mid­dle and up­per man­age­ment ex­pe­ri­ence and has moved away from the tech­ni­cal side to more em­pha­sis on lead­er­ship and men­tor­ing. He was last em­ployed as the op­er­a­tions man­ag­er at Point Lisas Ni­tro­gen Ltd, which was once the Farm­land Miss­chem plant. The am­mo­nia plant, which has an an­nu­al ca­pac­i­ty of 650,000 met­ric tonnes, is now owned equal­ly by Ter­ra Ni­tro­gen (Trinidad) Ltd, a sub­sidiary of CF In­dus­tries of Deer­field, Illi­nois and Koch In­dus­tries Inc.

Koch In­dus­tries, one of the biggest close­ly held com­pa­nies in the world by rev­enue, is run by well-known, US Re­pub­lic Par­ty sup­port­ers, the bil­lion­aire broth­ers Charles, 76, and David Koch, 71, who each own 42 per cent of the con­glom­er­ate. Bloomberg Web-site's re­cent tab­u­la­tion of the world's rich­est peo­ple placed the Koch broth­ers at num­ber 8 with an es­ti­mat­ed com­bined wealth of US$34 bil­lion. Ac­cord­ing to a 51,000-word pro­file in the Au­gust 2010 edi­tion of the New York­er mag­a­zine, the an­nu­al rev­enues of Koch In­dus­tries are to be a US$100 bil­lion. The mag­a­zine, which de­scribed the Koch's as the bil­lion­aire broth­ers who are wag­ing a war against Oba­ma, said that the com­pa­ny had grown spec­tac­u­lar­ly since their fa­ther, Fred, died, in 1967, and the broth­ers took charge.

"The Kochs op­er­ate oil re­finer­ies in Alas­ka, Texas, and Min­neso­ta, and con­trol some four thou­sand miles of pipeline. Koch In­dus­tries owns Brawny pa­per tow­els, Dix­ie cups, Geor­gia-Pa­cif­ic lum­ber, Stain­mas­ter car­pet, and Ly­cra, among oth­er prod­ucts. Forbes ranks it as the sec­ond-largest pri­vate com­pa­ny in the coun­try, af­ter Cargill, and its con­sis­tent prof­itabil­i­ty has made David and Charles Koch-who, years ago, bought out two oth­er broth­ers-among the rich­est men in Amer­i­ca."