Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Joanne Ogeer is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to fire the en­tire board of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT).

The re­quest came a day af­ter Ogeer called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to state­ments made by for­mer TSTT CEO Lisa Agard that she did not mis­lead Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, but in­stead he re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that she did not pro­vide.

Speak­ing at the CWU’s Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain of­fice yes­ter­day, Ogeer di­rect­ed her ire at TSTT’s sup­posed mis­man­age­ment and called on the Prime Min­is­ter to act. “I want to tell the Prime Min­is­ter this morn­ing, you do not like em­bar­rass­ment and fool­ery. Do what needs to be done. Re­move these in­com­pe­tent and in­ept per­sons from of­fice. Mr Prime Min­is­ter, ex­plain to Lisa Agard, Shi­va Ram­nar­ine and all of those who are still in the or­gan­i­sa­tion, what is meant by col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty? Col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is re­al. If the board of di­rec­tors erred, then they should be re­moved,” she said.

She al­so called for TSTT’s Se­nior Man­ag­er, En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial and Rep­u­ta­tion Man­age­ment to go.

Ogeer said while she has no faith that much will come from her call to have the board dealt with, she is hop­ing the pop­u­la­tion will be ag­gra­vat­ed enough to de­mand that more be done. She re­mind­ed the Prime Min­is­ter that the coun­try is in an elec­tion year and the elec­torate has ques­tions about last Oc­to­ber’s cy­ber at­tack, which saw the per­son­al in­for­ma­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter re­leased on the dark web.

Apart from the dis­missal of the board, Ogeer al­so called for crim­i­nal charges laid against any­one in­volved who caused the coun­try to be mis­led through mis­in­for­ma­tion giv­en to Gon­za­les

“We want ac­tion, by all means we want crim­i­nal charges laid if pos­si­ble. We want charges be­cause every­one who has mis­led the min­is­ter, who has mis­led Par­lia­ment, and who has fooled and at­tempt­ed to cov­er this thing up by ex­pos­ing con­fi­den­tial da­ta, they need to be held ac­count­able.”

Last De­cem­ber, Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath raised a mo­tion to send Gon­za­les to the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee for al­leged­ly mis­lead­ing the Par­lia­ment on the TSTT cy­ber­at­tack.

In No­vem­ber, Gon­za­les told Par­lia­ment, “I can ad­vise Ho­n­ourable Mem­bers, that based on the safe­ty pro­to­cols that were trig­gered when the in­cur­sion was de­tect­ed, that TSTT’s da­ta and the da­ta of its cus­tomers were not in any way com­pro­mised.”

A few days lat­er, Gon­za­les changed his state­ment, say­ing there was some com­pro­mise. He al­so or­dered an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter.

The union called for an up­date on that in­ves­ti­ga­tion, an up­date on the com­pa­ny’s pen­sion plan, foren­sic au­dit and oth­er con­tin­u­ing is­sues fac­ing the com­pa­ny.

Asked what the next step will be if calls for the board’s re­moval are ig­nored, Ogeer said it would be fool­hardy to say that but promised that “ac­tions will be in­ten­si­fied.”