Amid a wave of fir­ings and res­ig­na­tions across State boards in the wake of the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, one union leader is rais­ing alarm over the fu­ture of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (TSTT) ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship.

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) says it is con­cerned that the con­tract of TSTT CEO Kent West­ern may be ter­mi­nat­ed, based on in­for­ma­tion they re­ceived.

Speak­ing on the mat­ter, CWU Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer said while the CWU does not rep­re­sent West­ern, the union is ques­tion­ing the mo­tive be­hind the pos­si­ble move, sug­gest­ing it may be po­lit­i­cal­ly dri­ven.

“Is it be­cause of his al­leged po­lit­i­cal re­la­tion­ship? Be­cause it is be­ing bandied about out there that he’s a PNM ap­pointee and I want to be very care­ful be­cause per­sons would have point­ed fin­gers at the CWU call­ing us a PNM union. So, this is not about who’s PNM and who’s UNC, but this is about the prin­ci­pled po­si­tion in how these CEOs are be­ing re­moved and in­stalled,” she said.

Ogeer be­lieves the sit­u­a­tion re­flects a wider pat­tern of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in State boards, warn­ing that it threat­ens to erode pub­lic con­fi­dence and in­dus­tri­al sta­bil­i­ty.

She said par­ti­san ap­point­ments and dis­missals have be­come com­mon­place, ref­er­enc­ing re­cent lead­er­ship changes at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

“Apart from the gov­ern­ment po­lit­i­cal­ly in­ter­fer­ing with the ap­point­ments at State boards, as­sum­ing TSTT is next be­cause we be­lieve TSTT is next, does mer­it qual­i­fi­ca­tion re­sults, prof­itabil­i­ty in our case at TSTT, in­dus­tri­al peace, mean any­thing in the de­ci­sion mak­ing? We have board mem­bers be­ing ap­point­ed with lit­tle to no knowl­edge about the busi­ness. Sup­port­ers and fi­nanciers are be­ing ap­point­ed to State boards and CEOs are just be­ing shuf­fled at their whims and fan­cies,” she claimed.

Ogeer called for greater trans­paren­cy.

How­ev­er, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath rub­bised ru­mours of West­ern’s fir­ing.

“The TSTT board has not ex­pressed any in­ten­tion to ter­mi­nate Mr West­ern at this time. I, how­ev­er, will not re­spond to hy­po­thet­i­cals and spec­u­la­tion that are con­jured up every Mon­day morn­ing,” the min­is­ter said.

How­ev­er, Ogeer fired back say­ing time will tell whether Cab­i­net makes that de­ci­sion.

“Mr Padarath has a way with words but does not faze the CWU. The sov­er­eign­ty of par­lia­ment is par­lia­ment writes the mu­sic, the judges dance to the tune. In this case, the Board dances to the tune of Cab­i­net. So we will see how the mu­sic un­folds, see­ing the de­ci­sion will come from the Cab­i­net,” she quipped.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed West­ern, who said he had four more years on his con­tract but de­clined to com­ment fur­ther.

Since the new ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice, there have been sev­er­al high-pro­file dis­missals, in­clud­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day as WASA CEO and Dr Alvin Hi­laire as Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor.