President David Granger has called upon the management of the National Communications Network (NCN) to operate “in a more prudent and compassionate manner” when dealing with employees and he described the yanking of a news anchor because of her pregnancy “out of order” and the depriving of another of one month’s salary as a form of punishment as “inhumane.”
The President made the call after he was asked on the Public Interest interview programme about the temporary removal of NCN’s news anchor Natasha Smith due to her pregnancy and the one month suspension of Sports Editor Jocelle Archibald-Hawke over a Facebook post.
Following a protest by the Guyana Press Association and others and public outcry, Smith has since been returned to the anchor’s chair. Although NCN has said that she was not removed because of her pregnancy, the leaked minutes of a management meeting have suggested otherwise.
The network is still to rescind its decision to suspend Archibald-Hawke over an unsavory remark about her colleagues on Facebook but who removed same when requested to. She was also asked to write letters of apology, which she did, but which were not deemed sincere by management.
President Granger said that NCN was “quite out of place out of order” to have news anchor removed from the job she has been doing.
He said that pregnancy should be rewarded and there should be no obstruction to women being allowed to perform their duties because they are pregnant “and that is a state policy.”
Further, he pointed out that there was an absence of compassion on the part of the administration and it is expected that in future as it relates to both employees “there could be a more reasonable form of administration.”
“I think it is inhumane to deprive an employee of her salary without due process. She hasn’t committed a crime, it is not as if she murdered and I think it was inhumane to take away her salary or to suspend her from her duties, I don’t know she has committed any crime at all,” the Head of State said.
“There needs to be some instructions passed to administrations of state entities that this not a power play and that we are running an administration for the benefit of all the Guyanese people and it [must not] become a platform for one person to exercise absolute power,” the President said.
While he said that he cannot say that actions will be taken against NCN’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Lennox Cornette, he hopes that the persons who would have been responsible for taking the actions against the two female employees would operate in a more prudent and compassionate manner in the future.
