PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Staff at the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) were re­port­ed­ly brought to tears by the news yes­ter­day that Kent West­ern had re­signed as CEO of the com­pa­ny.

West­ern’s res­ig­na­tion was con­firmed via a me­dia re­lease from the com­pa­ny. The re­lease al­so con­firmed that Keino Cox, as­sis­tant vice pres­i­dent of Emerg­ing Ser­vices and In­no­va­tion, had been ap­point­ed act­ing CEO with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

The re­lease said, “Dur­ing his tenure, Mr West­ern led the com­pa­ny through a pe­ri­od of trans­for­ma­tion that in­clud­ed a re­turn to prof­itabil­i­ty, im­proved cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion scores and in­creased em­ploy­ee sat­is­fac­tion.”

West­ern said, “It has been an ho­n­our to lead TSTT through such a crit­i­cal pe­ri­od. I’m proud of the progress we’ve made to­geth­er and I’m con­fi­dent in the team’s abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue dri­ving pos­i­tive change.”

West­ern was ap­point­ed CEO in Sep­tem­ber 2024, af­ter act­ing as CEO fol­low­ing the de­par­ture of Lisa Agard in No­vem­ber 2023.

In an in­ter­nal email ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, hu­man re­sources ex­ec­u­tive De­bra Thomas, in an­nounc­ing West­ern’s de­par­ture to staff, not­ed that dur­ing his tenure, he led the com­pa­ny through a pe­ri­od of op­er­a­tional re­align­ment and strate­gic fo­cus.

West­ern’s de­par­ture has come less than two weeks af­ter the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union raised con­cerned that he was set to be re­placed.

CWU sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer said then that while the CWU does not rep­re­sent West­ern, the union was against this, as there had been no valid ba­sis for him to be re­moved from the po­si­tion in their view.

“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 then.

How­ev­er, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath dis­missed those con­cerns at the time, say­ing, “The TSTT board has not ex­pressed any in­ten­tion to ter­mi­nate Mr West­ern at this time.”

He al­so re­fused to en­ter­tain “hy­po­thet­i­cals and spec­u­la­tion con­jured up every Mon­day morn­ing.”

Ogeer did not wish to com­ment on the mat­ter yes­ter­day, but stat­ed the union was ex­pect­ed to ad­dress the de­vel­op­ment at a me­dia con­fer­ence to­day.

How­ev­er, she said the union had been flood­ed with calls fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment, with em­ploy­ees ex­press­ing sad­ness that West­ern had left, as they had de­scribed him as an “em­ploy­ee’s CEO” who cared about the work life, pro­fes­sion­al life and per­son­al life of work­ers.

Con­cern that West­ern’s de­par­ture was im­mi­nent ramped up over the week­end, af­ter Cox promi­nent­ly rep­re­sent­ed TSTT at CAN­TO 2025 last week in the Ba­hamas. While he had at­tend­ed in his role as as­sis­tant vice pres­i­dent of Emerg­ing Ser­vices and In­no­va­tion, Cox was pic­tured tak­ing part in sig­nif­i­cant meet­ings with the Prime Min­is­ter of the Ba­hamas, with West­ern not present.

When asked about the pos­si­bil­i­ty West­ern would be re­placed over the week­end, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and for­mer CWU sec­re­tary gen­er­al Clyde El­der said any TSTT mat­ters should be ad­dressed to the board of TSTT.

Cox has over 25 years of lead­er­ship ex­pe­ri­ence in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, dig­i­tal in­no­va­tion, and pub­lic sec­tor mod­erni­sa­tion. He was in­volved in sev­er­al in­no­va­tions in the com­pa­ny, in­clud­ing e-Ten­der SaaS (Soft­ware as a Ser­vice), e-Cash­book, e-Health SaaS, e-Pay FIN­TECH, and e-Kiosk so­lu­tions. Un­der his lead­er­ship, TSTT al­so be­came the first telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider in T&T to se­cure an Elec­tron­ic Mon­ey Is­suer (EMI) Li­cence from the Cen­tral Bank and he was cru­cial to the roll-out of the Par­lour e-com­merce plat­form in 2022.

In the TSTT re­lease yes­ter­day, Cox praised his pre­de­ces­sor, stat­ing, “I thank Kent for his lead­er­ship over the years. TSTT is on a strong path, and I look for­ward to build­ing on the mo­men­tum along­side our tal­ent­ed team.”

Kern Dass, chair­man of TSTT’s board of di­rec­tors, said, “The board and I ex­tend our sin­cere thanks to Mr West­ern for his ser­vice and wel­come Mr Cox to his new role. We are con­fi­dent in the fu­ture of TSTT and look for­ward to con­tin­ued suc­cess un­der Mr Cox’s lead­er­ship.”

Dass was ap­point­ed TSTT chair­man in June along­side Randy Ram­ta­hal, Nadria Prab­hu­di­al, Cas­sili­na Kelshall, and Kyle Mal­oney.