PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) has ex­pressed con­cern that State-owned TSTT may be desta­bilised amid ru­mours of se­nior-lev­el changes with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

On Fri­day, a so­cial me­dia blog post went vi­ral claim­ing that TSTT’s Gen­er­al Coun­sel and Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary Gayle Al­lick Solomon, As­sis­tant VP of Ex­ec­u­tive Sales Dar­ryl Duke, and Brent Olton, Se­nior Man­ag­er of Se­cu­ri­ty and Op­er­a­tional Risk, had been placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave. The post al­so sug­gest­ed that ad­di­tion­al changes were ex­pect­ed across the com­pa­ny’s ex­ec­u­tive team.

This de­vel­op­ment comes two months af­ter Kent West­ern re­signed as CEO, with Keino Cox ap­point­ed as act­ing CEO in Ju­ly.

When asked about the mat­ter, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath said he was aware of the ac­tion tak­en against two em­ploy­ees and as­sured that the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions “con­tin­ue to func­tion smooth­ly.”

He added: “I am ad­vised that the sit­u­a­tion stems from al­le­ga­tions of in­ter­nal pro­cure­ment breach­es which are un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by man­age­ment — a sit­u­a­tion in­her­it­ed from the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

The CWU, when con­tact­ed, is­sued a state­ment ex­press­ing con­cern over the se­quence of events.

“The union is con­cerned about the po­si­tions and of­fice hold­ers of those sent on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave. Two of these po­si­tions are at the top ech­e­lon of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. From an ex­ter­nal per­spec­tive, the num­bers seem to be in­creas­ing, cre­at­ing a per­cep­tion of in­sta­bil­i­ty at TSTT among oth­er man­age­r­i­al staff and union­ized work­ers,” the state­ment said.

The CWU could not con­firm ru­mours of new ap­point­ments but said it had re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that changes were forth­com­ing.

“While some ru­mours hold truth, I have been re­li­ably in­formed that a gen­tle­man will be join­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion in the ca­pac­i­ty of Hu­man Re­sources/IR, along with oth­er per­sons soon to as­sume roles in Fi­nance. The Union will make a fur­ther pro­nounce­ment as we ob­serve these shifts,” the state­ment added.

It con­clud­ed: “The ac­tions of the Board of Di­rec­tors and CEO mir­ror the pop­u­lar PNM elec­tion tune ‘sweep­ing time.’ The ques­tion re­mains: what have these per­sons done? We trust that prop­er in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions pro­ce­dures will be fol­lowed and that TSTT can re­turn to pro­vid­ing a fric­tion­less ex­pe­ri­ence for both in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal cus­tomers, free from po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence.”