Minister of Public Infra-structure, David Patterson has defended his decision to remove GPL’s CEO Bharat Dindyal and he will today convene a meeting with the heads of departments and management of the utility on the way forward.
The meeting today comes as key positions have to be filled and a new board is still to be appointed.
On Friday, Dindyal was let go as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of GPL after an ongoing clash with his deputy, whom he had accused of overstepping his authority by trying to send senior managers on leave and forcibly removing them from company offices. A video of the clash between Dindyal and his deputy surfaced on social media. The removal of Dindyal has been strongly criticised in some quarters.\Speaking with Stabroek News yesterday, Minister Patterson brushed aside public perception that the country’s only power provider was in turmoil given the letting go of the CEO while Deputy CEO of GPL Aeshwar Deonarine had earlier been sent on leave in an unrelated matter and the Operations Manager position has been vacant since December.
Patterson told Stabroek News that the meeting planned today will be used to plot the way forward noting that he was hard pressed to think that one of the largest companies in Guyana would not have in some form of another succession planning that is aimed at having to face hard realities like a possible dismissal, death or unexpected resignation of top executives.
He said that while he was forced to get involved in a series of conflicts between Dindyal and DCEO Technical, Colin Welch once the new Board of Directors was established a review of the performance of Dindyal and other management staff would have happened.
The minister denied any political motive behind the dismissal of Dindyal. He disclosed that in April of last year the GPL board, then headed by Winston Brassington, had done a 100-point assessment of the CEO and it was determined that he had a score of 44 with a recommendation that his contract not be renewed. Patterson noted that former Prime Minister Samuel Hinds took the decision to retain Dindyal on a month-to-month basis for six months.
Patterson said that in Dindyal’s eight years as CEO of GPL, technical and commercial losses have been at 31% while industry standards are 7-10% worldwide. He said “GPL has been bailed out almost to the same level of GuySuCo – money wise- not a single word on that, at least GuySuCo changed several CEOs during that period, GPL never.”
He noted that “an organisation like GPL is not a one-man show…I know we are working in the public service but there is always continuation mechanisms.”
Patterson said that the Company Secretary, Laurian Bancroft was also equipped alongside the technical managers to ensure GPL was working. He said that while he has given his recommendations for Board appointments, at this time those names were still with Cabinet. While the company was experiencing losses and subsidies were necessary, Dindyal’s salary according to documents seen by Stabroek News was set at over $46M per year with allowances amounting to an additional $28M bringing his annual salary to roughly $74M. In 2014 GPL got a subvention to the tune of $4.35B with $3.85B to go toward capital expenditure. In 2013 the then combined opposition, APNU and the AFC voted down $5.2B from the $10B subvention requested.
Dindyal had previously told Stabroek News that the new GPL board had been promised since the beginning of the month as he highlighted that the life of the former board was allowed to expire in July.
Prior to the government’s announcement of the dismissal, in an interview with Stabroek News, Dindyal had said that he had appointed a three-person team to investigate Welch’s accusations against two managers. Welch, in the company of police, had attempted to remove the managers from the premises of GPL’s Sheriff Street offices. Welch could not be contacted by Stabroek News for comment.
Dindyal noted that following the initial incident on August 7, Welch on Monday last, with police ranks in tow, again attempted to serve Senior Loss Reduction Manager Loaknauth Singh and Senior Investigator David Kaladin with letters placing them on leave.
“Although we are a government agency, we are configured as a private company. So, there are rules and regulations and everything we do is within the confines of the law,” Dindyal stated.
The two men were reinstated by Dindyal.
