CAL CEO BROKE RULES

Garvin Medera, CAL chief executive officer.
Garvin Medera, CAL chief executive officer.

THE Joint Select Committee (JSC) on State Enterprises yesterday found that Caribbean Airlines Ltd (CAL) CEO Garvin Medera broke a number of rules and flouted proper procedures since his appointment in October and the issues included hiring of employees without security background checks and sitting on an interview panel that included employees he knew from his previous employer, Digicel TT.

The issues were raised yesterday at a JSC media conference at the Parliament building in Port of Spain on three reports including a follow-up to the Fifth Report on an inquiry into the administration and operations of CAL.

JSC member Fazal Karim said there were concerns about the recent recruitment and selection process including that a number of new CAL managers were former employees of Digicel TT, which was the former employer of incumbent CEO, Medera. Also under the microscope was Medera’s sitting on a panel which interviewed these people. Karim said this was an obvious conflict of interest and breach of good human resource practice.

He also said security background checks were not carried out on several new hirings including some senior staff, among them some of the about 11 people from Digicel. “This is a clear breach of CAL’s own policy.” The JSC called for CAL to restart the process for all employees for which background checks had not been done or were incomplete.

RECKLESS AND

IRRESPONSIBLE

Karim said CAL Chairman Shameer Mohammed acted immediately to implement several of the recommendations. He said the committee was also informed CAL had its best performance since 2009 in 2017/2018 despite a $10 million increase in fuel costs.

JSC member Wade Mark said it was the “heights of recklessness and irresponsibility for any CEO of any State Enterprise, more so an airline, where passenger safety, security and well-being is supposed to be the number one priority, to indicate you have not affected the policy in place for so many decades.”

He said since Medera arrived “a short while ago” he had already breached a number of policies and one of the most egregious offences was against security checks. Mark said security cannot be ignored in 2018 in a world where acts of terrorism have been experienced.

“This CEO ought to be taken to task,” Mark charged. Mark said the JSC has to decide whether to ask Parliament to have the State Enterprise Performance Monitoring Manual turned into a legal instrument with appropriate sanctions and penalties for breaches.

PEOPLE EARN

$1M PER YEAR

JSC Chairman David Small said it was unbelievable Medera sat on a panel for senior positions and knew people being interviewed and “seemed fine with it.” He advised if Medera wanted to engage good people from his previous employer he should have ensured the process was clean and he had no “fingerprints” on it.

“It seemed rather cavalier how it was done.” Small said the committee “had a hard time dealing with Caribbean Airlines.”

He added that CAL indicated it was reviewing the policy on which positions would require security background checks and the committee looked forward to seeing the new policy. He also said about 40 people were earning more than $1 million per year when taxpayers were supporting the running of the company and some frugality must be in place. The JSC called for a compensation survey to ensure suitable compensation packages to all staff.

Small said the committee remains hopeful CAL will turn around but it had to fix its administrative problems.

He added the the JSC’s report had been laid in both Houses of Parliament and relayed to CAL, and CAL had 60 days to return to the JSC and report on the implementation of the recommendations.

FOREIGN OVER LOCAL

Other practices flagged included continued employment of people who had passed the retirement age of 60 years and seeking overseas pilots without an effort to establish whether local pilots could be sourced.

The JSC also found evidence the terms of reference for employment of new management were not submitted to the Finance Ministry, CAL’s line ministry, nor approved by the Cabinet’s human resource advisory sub-committee.

Other concerns included: critical vacancies at the the management level; an apparent absence of succession planning regarding pilots, maintenance and engineering; large bonuses believed to have been computed at CAL and bonus arrangements that do not adhere to the manual; senior positions advertised online for seven days while junior positions advertised in newspapers for two weeks; and CAL owing $193.2 million to the Airports Authority, as at April 30, 2018. Multiple calls and a text to Medera’s cellphone went unanswered yesterday. Finance Minister Colm Imbert told Newsday he would have to review footage of the JSC media conference before commenting.

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"CAL CEO BROKE RULES"

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