TSTT Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Kent West­ern has stepped down, with As­sis­tant Vice Pres­i­dent of Emerg­ing Ser­vices and In­no­va­tion Keino Cox named Act­ing CEO, ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly.

TSTT made the an­nounce­ment on Mon­day, stat­ing that West­ern had led the com­pa­ny through a trans­for­ma­tive pe­ri­od that saw a re­turn to prof­itabil­i­ty, im­proved cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, and stronger in­ter­nal en­gage­ment.

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

Cox, who has been with the com­pa­ny since 1998, thanked West­ern for his lead­er­ship and said he looked for­ward to build­ing on the mo­men­tum. “TSTT is on a strong path, and I look for­ward to build­ing on the mo­men­tum along­side our tal­ent­ed team.”

In an in­ter­nal email ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Hu­man Re­sources Ex­ec­u­tive De­bra Thomas con­firmed the lead­er­ship change and praised Cox’s track record, cit­ing his role in the de­vel­op­ment of key na­tion­al dig­i­tal plat­forms and TSTT's sta­tus as the first tele­coms provider in the coun­try to se­cure an Elec­tron­ic Mon­ey Is­suer li­cence from the Cen­tral Bank.

The of­fi­cial state­ment framed the move as part of TSTT’s on­go­ing evo­lu­tion, but it comes amid height­ened scruti­ny over po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence in state-run com­pa­nies.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer warned some time ago that the union was close­ly mon­i­tor­ing West­ern’s po­si­tion and raised con­cerns that his re­moval might be po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

“Is it be­cause of his al­leged po­lit­i­cal re­la­tion­ship? Be­cause it is be­ing bandied about out there that he’s a PNM ap­pointee… 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,” Ogeer said.

She point­ed to a broad­er pat­tern of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence and warned that pub­lic con­fi­dence and in­dus­tri­al peace were at risk. “Sup­port­ers and fi­nanciers are be­ing ap­point­ed to State boards and CEOs are just be­ing shuf­fled at their whims and fan­cies,” she said.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath had dis­missed those con­cerns say­ing, “The TSTT board has not ex­pressed any in­ten­tion to ter­mi­nate Mr West­ern at this time,” and re­fused to en­ter­tain “hy­po­thet­i­cals and spec­u­la­tion con­jured up every Mon­day morn­ing.”

When con­tact­ed orig­i­nal­ly, West­ern said he had four years re­main­ing on his con­tract but de­clined to com­ment fur­ther.

His de­par­ture fol­lows a string of high-pro­file re­movals since the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion, in­clud­ing WASA CEO Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day and Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire.