Former NP chairman’s travels cost State $.6M

Former NP Chairman, Senator Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan, during her tenure at the State-owned company “reportedly went on worldwide travel” at a cost to the State to the tune of $600,000. This was revealed to Newsday yesterday by Attorney General Glenda Morean.

The Attorney General was responding to a question from Seepersad-Bachan on whether an ex-employee of NP had been engaged as consultants with the company. Newsday secured a copy of the details of these trips. During the period July 1996 and January 1999 Seepersad-Bachan made 17 trips. The breakdown of the Chairman’s overseas travel revealed that she visited Ecuador, Barbados, India, St Maarten, Brazil, Santo Domingo and San Francisco; she also made three visits to Houston, three visits to Florida, two to England and two to Venezuela. The tickets cost $221,335.33 with the most expensive being those to India, London, Houston, San Francisco and Ecuador. The allowances given on these trips amounted to $240,163.22. Again the figures for allowances were highest for the trip to India which lasted six days and cost $43,353.78, along with those for London, San Francisco, Houston and Miami.

Morean, in giving her answer, said that NP was “forced to re-hire” Edmund Arneaud and Ernest Williams as consultants “because of their very special competencies.” However, Morean said it was necessary to examine and assess the performance of the Board of Directors of NP and in particular the Chairmanship of the Board during the period of the dismissal of these and other managers. In doing so, she accused the former chairman of dismissing competent managers in a willy-nilly manner. She said the former chairman refused to grant increases and bonuses to managers despite the Company’s record of profits. Yet, her travel bill was more than $.5 million between July 27,1996 and December 29, 1999. Seepersad-Bachan revealed documents which showed that Williams was fired by the Board. She accused the AG of misleading the Parliament on the issue.