‘No politics or race in management changes’

INSTEAD of keeping 14 executive managers and eight Heads of Departments created by the previous Board, a new Petrotrin management narrowed the list of executive managers down to six in a recent restructuring exercise.

In stating this yesterday, Executive Chairman of Petrotrin Malcolm Jones, told Newsday the removal of some 22 managers from top managerial positions at the company, had nothing to do with “people, politics or ethnicity.” Jones described as “shocking” an expose’ in a daily newspaper listing 22 “executive managers,” labelled as United National Congress activists, whose positions have either been made redundant or who have been re-deployed at the State-owned Point-a-Pierre-based company. The “list” was attached to a three-page letter sent by attorneys Dr Fenton Ramsahoye QC and Anand Ramlogan, to executive chairman Jones. Jones said he received a copy of the “list” yesterday, but the Petrotrin chairman categorically denied that party affiliation or race was behind the move to make “certain” positions redundant. “Though I had asked for this list months ago, I got it on my desk yesterday,” Jones told Newsday.

In justifying why the company reduced 22 managerial positions to six, Jones pointed out that the “executive manager” position had become a burden and somewhat irrelevant to the efficient operations of Petrotrin. Those 22 positions were created by Rodney Jagai when he was appointed chairman of the Board, under the then UNC administration. Jones pointed out that the State Sector Services “executive manager’s” duties, involved attending to the company’s roads and other duties. Explaining that 22 “executive managerial” positions were too cumbersome and bureaucratic, Jones told Newsday, “imagine you have 13 to 14 executive managers reporting to the executive chairman every morning. It just couldn’t work...I restructured this down to about five or six, to make for better efficiency.” Jones added however, that none of the 22 managers or Heads of Departments who were removed suffered any loss in salary or perks. He said three of the “executive managers,” contrary to what the “list” stated, were in fact promoted. One of the them was Aleem Hosein who was Vice President of Trinmar. Jones said Hosein left to take up the position of Vice President of British Gas.

Jones responded to critics of perceived and so-called “ethnic cleansing” in the industry, saying the current management cannot be made to account, if all but two of the persons appointed to the “executive manager” positions were East Indians. “In restructuring, it’s obvious that it would be the East Indians who will be re-deployed, since they were already in these created positions. Bear in mind, they suffered no loss of earnings or perks,” Jones said.