An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

The chair­man and board of di­rec­tors from the ma­jor­i­ty State-owned Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) and its whol­ly owned sub­sidiary, Am­plia, have all re­signed. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the chair­man and di­rec­tors sent their res­ig­na­tions to Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL), which is the ma­jor­i­ty 51 per cent own­er of TSTT, yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

The res­ig­na­tions came af­ter Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath man­dat­ed TSTT and its sub­sidiary, Am­plia, to put a hold on all hu­man re­source ac­tions un­til fur­ther no­tice with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

In an in­ter­view on Tues­day, Padarath said the TSTT board re­fused to re­sign. As such, an in­ter­nal memo was is­sued and de­tailed that the di­rec­tive ap­plied across all cat­e­gories of em­ploy­ment­—per­ma­nent, tem­po­rary, part-time, con­tract, con­sul­tan­cy and con­tin­gent work­ers. The memo was is­sued by TSTT chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Kent West­ern and was ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia.

Yes­ter­day, Padarath, in a What­sApp re­sponse, said, “One res­ig­na­tion from a board mem­ber of TSTT was ten­dered and two mem­bers of Am­plia’s board al­so did the same.”

Ac­cord­ing to TSTT’s web­site, the com­pa­ny has a five-mem­ber board which was head­ed by chair­man An­tho­ny Peyson and in­clud­ed An­ge­lo Austin, Wen­dell Berkley, An­nalean In­niss, and Cavelle Joseph-St Omer. 

The two Am­plia board mem­bers were Amoy Van Lowe and Vaughn Welsh. 

One di­rec­tor, who spoke to Guardian Me­dia on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said it was far from the truth that the board was re­fus­ing to re­sign. 

“We stayed on the board as we were told to stay on un­til the new board is put in place. We take our di­rec­tives from the chair­man and not the min­is­ter. This is un­nec­es­sary con­fu­sion and putting our names in dis­pute for no rea­son. It is pub­lic knowl­edge that when a new gov­ern­ment comes in­to of­fice, the State board mem­bers and chair have to re­sign. Oth­er State board mem­bers are re­sign­ing with­out any is­sues, but dra­mas must be over TSTT and Am­plia,” the di­rec­tor lament­ed. 

It was not clear yes­ter­day if or how soon the di­rec­tive to put a hold on all hu­man re­source ac­tiv­i­ty would be lift­ed now that board mem­bers had ten­dered their res­ig­na­tion let­ters.

The memo in­di­cat­ed that TSTT was re­quired to sus­pend all of the fol­low­ing ac­tions:

 • Trans­fers 

 • Re­cruit­ment 

 • Pro­mo­tions 

 • De­mo­tions 

 • Sep­a­ra­tions or ter­mi­na­tions 

 • Salary ad­just­ments 

 • Con­tract ex­ten­sions 

 “This ap­plies to both new ac­tions and any that are cur­rent­ly in process or pend­ing ap­proval. All such ac­tiv­i­ty is to be paused un­til for­mal guid­ance is pro­vid­ed. As an ex­am­ple, if you have a con­sul­tan­cy form that you were plan­ning to is­sue or re­turn to a po­ten­tial con­sul­tant to­day, please hold it un­til fur­ther no­tice,” the memo added. 

TSTT man­age­ment yes­ter­day opt­ed not to com­ment on the mat­ter.

About TSTT 

TSTT is joint­ly owned by Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (NEL), which in turn is ma­jor­i­ty owned by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and Ca­ble & Wire­less (West In­dies) Lim­it­ed (C&W). NEL owns 51 per cent of TSTT’s is­sued share cap­i­tal, while C&W holds 49 per cent.   

Am­plia Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ltd is a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of the TSTT Group with its board of di­rec­tors and man­age­ment.  

TSTT ac­quired 100 per cent share­hold­ing of Massy Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ltd (MCL) on Ju­ly 31, 2017, for $215 mil­lion, au­dit­ed and as­sessed to be $42 mil­lion less than the “net book val­ue” of the as­sets.  TSTT then changed the name to Am­plia.