BASSETERRE, St Kitts, CMC- St. kitts attorney Charles Wilkin QC says he was forced to step down as chair of the governance committee of WICB in the face of blunt resistance by territorial boards to a change in the way directors are appointed.
Wilkins who was heading a three man committee reviewing the structure of the WICB says directors have flatly refused to accept any changes.
His reasons for quitting are contained in correspondences between himself and WICB president Dr. Julian Hunte, released late Monday.
“The territorial board directors flatly rejected the recommendations of the Governance Committee as to the restructuring of the Board and refused to make any change at all to the current structure” said Wilkin in his resignation letter to Hunte following a special meeting of the board in Barbados on September 14th.
“The blunt refusal of the territorial board members to follow their own stated principles casts serious doubt on their commitment to the rest of the strategic plan and their capacity to implement same”.
The senior attorney, who was earlier this year re-elected to serve as President of the St.Kitts and Nevis Bar Association, is seeking to clear the air over his decision to resign following a statement from the WICB released on Monday.
According to the statement Wilkin offered his resignation after “the Territorial Boards did not agree to the implementation of the full menu of recommendations”.
In addition to the 10 recommendations which were agreed to, the Board of Directors also deferred decisions on six other recommendations while not agreeing to one recommendation, the WICB statement said.
However the main bone of contention stems from the Governance committee’s proposal for a new method of appointing the board of directors different from the current territorial based approach.
In light of the board’s apparent resistance, Wilkins has accused directors of wasting the committee’s time and says the cost of the review process could have been saved
“Knowing full well that they wanted to preserve at all costs all of their positions on the Board, a conclusion I draw from listening to them for the whole day at Friday’s meeting and at the earlier meeting in St.Lucia to which I was invited, the territorial board members should have spared the Governance Committee our valuable time and saved the Board the cost of the review exercise” said Wilkins who headed a committee that included financial consultant Dr. Grenville Phillips and WICB Director Elson Crick.