Zabarally Armogan, the driver who was employed with the National Communications Network’s (NCN) Berbice Operations has refuted allegations in the Kaieteur News that someone at the state TV station was collecting his salary even though he had stopped working there.
Armogan said he worked with NCN up to the end of May this year and collected his salary up to that point.
Armogan, who showed Stabroek News a signed statement refuting the allegations in the newspaper articles published over the past couple of days about him, said that the last payment he received from NCN Berbice was in May, 2012, the last month which he worked for the company.
The statement he signed added that “I have discharged my duties faithfully that was assigned to me”.
He added “On Sunday, 10.06.2012, I was surprised when I saw the Kaieteur News paper stated that I was unaware of being paid by NCN”. The signed statement, which this newspaper is in possession of, went on to say that, “the article was totally dishonest and want to create mischief. No one from Kaieteur News ever contacted me on this issue or any other issue so I do not know where they got this misinformation from”.
Armogan was accused of working his hire car, HB 9599, too, during the days when he was supposed to be at NCN and was also accused of stating in a secretly taped conversation that he stopped working at NCN in December. The other allegation was that his car was seen recently in the NCN Berbice compound parked even after staffers at the station allegedly said that they knew no person by the name of Zabarally Armogan who worked or ever worked there.
Stabroek News caught up with Armogan who sat down and discussed the various allegations. “When I see the article in the newspaper, I said this is wrong, because I know I resigned from the 31st of May and I was drawing my salary”.
Speaking about his car being spotted in the NCN compound, Armogan said that this does not say anything since he could have been conducting his private business at NCN. “I was there on my personal business and my car was not left there for more than ten minutes; I was there with my car”.
On photographs that were supposedly taken of him working his hire car during the time he was supposed to be working for NCN, he added, “I don’t know nothing about anybody taking out my photographs of me working my hire car. I do work hire car off of my own when I finish working with NCN because I does work late and when I finish working, then I does take back my time”.
Armogan, responding to the allegation of him saying that he revealed on a tape that he stopped working for NCN in December, said that “I was never on tape; I don’t know if anybody taped me— I don’t know nothing what they are talking about— let me see the tape; or hear the tape”.
The allegations that are being reported in the print media, he said, are fueled “by mischief— mischievous allegations and they want to implicate somebody else who is superior at NCN”.
He said that he stopped working with NCN on May 31, 2012, “after I handed in my resignation on May 1”. “I never ceased working in December; I continued working”.
Reports published in the Kaieteur News accused NCN of sending cheques for over $40,000 to Berbice to pay Armogan even though he had left the position. The reports also stated that the monies were going to a fictitious person at the entity in Berbice. Armogan said that he does not know anything about that “and I received my normal salary until May 2012”.
He said that he was employed by NCN “and does not know whether he was brought on for the elections campaigns” last year.
Meanwhile, NCN Berbice Coordinator, Faizal M. Jaffarally, has refuted the claims made by the newspaper articles that have been published since Sunday. He said that he did not make any threats to his employees that if they spill information they would all lose their jobs. He also added that no one at NCN Berbice ever “slammed down the phone” when Kaieteur News called for information recently. Responding to allegations by the Kaieteur News of money taken in for ads “being pocketed by a senior official at the state-owned entity”, Jaffarally said there is no financial discrepancy at his station.
He showed Stabroek News an example of what the station’s advertising sheet looks like. The advertising sheet, he said, is prepared on a daily basis for showing of ads and a copy is sent directly to the Head office of the company. All ads aired on the Berbice channel are documented, paid for and all revenues generated are reflected on the document and sent to Georgetown so that they know exactly what is happening.
Jaffarally has since opined that many of the allegations being made against the entity’s Berbice operations, and in particular in relation to the said driver, are being fueled by a former employee’s personal vendetta against the entity.
