Dear Editor,
I read with utter disbelief the front page story in Kaieteur News of October 14, 2015, claiming that only four NCN staff knew about the presence of satellite uplink equipment sitting in a store room of NCN and that I was somehow involved in this debacle.
Let me state clearly, for the record, that I left NCN on June 30th 2012. I could not have therefore had anything to do with the capital budget of 2012 since the budget process starts in July/August of each year with a submission of a wish list to the board of directors. The list is prepared in order of importance and once approved by the board is submitted to the ministry of Finance and the Office of the President. Each item on the list has to be justified by a written plan and a verbal presentation by each agency head several times at the Ministry of Finance and Office of the President before a figure is determined for capital budget support to each agency each year.
That figure is then applied to the capital budget submission and whatever is prioritized above the line established by the agency’s allocation is approved and the rest is discarded. The person making the presentation for 2012 was certainly not me as I had left before the process started.
The allocation is then taken to Parliament for approval as part of the capital budget presentation and is documented in the annual estimates with reasons for each line item and verbal presentations to the committee of supply. Once the capital budget is approved in April/ May of the following year the items are purchased and installed.
The failure here seems to be on the part of the Board of Directors and the Management team at NCN at the time of the receipt of the equipment in the third quarter of 2013. Either they were not aware of the purpose of the purchased equipment or they simply dropped the ball and failed to proceed with the implementation of the system.
Clearly the blame for this cannot be placed on my shoulders as I was not part of the Management team or the Board of Directors for the last three and one half years.
I humbly request that you give this clarification a prominent a place in your publication.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Sattaur;
Former CEO, NCN