Former Chairman of the Guyana National Broadcasting Authority (GNBA) Leslie Sobers has defended the decision to simultaneously act as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the agency alongside another Board member since 2017 and to be paid separate salaries and Board stipend allowances for both posts.
Sobers told Stabroek News that it was the board of the GNBA, when it was formed in 2017, that decided on interim management while they looked for a CEO and a decision was taken that he and the board member, Aretha Campbell, act in the meantime. The duo acted in the capacity from that time until the board was dissolved last week.
The actions has left Attorney General Anil Nandlall aghast at what he called “double dipping”, saying that the board should have long appointed a CEO to manage the agency instead of paying two of its Board members to do the job.
“A reading of the Broadcasting Act leads to the clear impression that the Act contemplated a Board of Directors headed by a Chairman and that Board shall appoint a Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The Act is so structured that the CEO is to carry out the decisions of the Board and to manage the day-to-day operations of the Authority. Indeed, that was how the Authority first functioned and the CEO was a full-time staff [member] holding a post-graduate degree and being paid a comparatively attractive remuneration package,” Nandlall told this newspaper.
“By no stretch of language, logic or law can one argue that it was intended for the Chairman to act as the CEO and draw two sets of salaries. This type of double-dipping must be irregular, if not outright illegal. As I have said before, across the State apparatus, one finds multiple examples of such abuse of power …In Opposition, we were continuously highlighting such abuse of power, illegalities and unharnessed rein on the Treasury,” he added.
Frequency
The salary of the CEO was $479,910 with a non-taxable allowance of $110,000. The monies were split where the Chairman was paid $335,937 and Board member Aretha Campbell, $143,973. The duo would both get $55,000 each of the non-taxable allowance.
Also of concern was the frequency of board meetings, where there was a $65,000 per meeting stipend but Sobers said that there is nothing untoward because it was different committees which sat and the stipend amounts were never increased from 2012.
He explained that when the new board was appointed in 2017, the agency’s Chief Executive Officer had resigned and thus there was an opening.
The Board, Sobers said, decided that it would advertise for a new CEO but would form an Interim Management Committee since work at the agency had to continue and there were plans for reform, but of key note was that a CEO was needed for the agency as per law so that the board could act.
“The board, it would have had to run the authority in accordance with the law until such time a CEO was found. When the idea was floated at a Board meeting that I act as CEO, I recused myself and the board made the decision. I told them that I could not do it alone and Ms Campbell was nominated to assist. It was a Board decision we would spilt the CEO salary,” Sobers said when contacted on the matter.
Further, he added, “The salary that was split, it was funds already budgeted for… and when we made that decision, in accordance with the law, the relevant subject minister was informed. The prime minister was the relevant subject minister who was informed and we got no objection,” he added and said that the salary ratio of division was determined because of the additional duties that came with it.
Three years
When asked why a decision to act in the interim turned out to be over three years, and if the monetary benefits influenced the decision, he responded that on the verge of appointing a CEO in December 2018, the then government was hit with a motion of No-Confidence and the Board felt it prudent to wait. As such the duo continued to act.
“When this no confidence motion came up in December 2018 we were about to appoint a CEO and the board decided on not doing that right away because of what was going on in the country. We thought it would not be prudent … in order to spare a professional any discomfort we thought it wise to wait before the appointment of a substantive CEO,” he said.
And on the issue of the frequency of board meetings where the $65,000 per meeting fee was attached, Sobers said that it was for special committee meetings and never were the members at each meeting since they had different roles on respective committees.
But according to him, as Chairman, the law gives him the right to be present at all. And if there were 10 meetings every month, he could attend and claim an additional $650,000 stipend.
“The meetings never increased. The board has five committees. We have [the] legal and licensing committee, the finance committee, the human resource committee, the monitoring and compliance committee, the public relations and education committee and then we have the regular board and then we have the special investigative committee. We thought it prudent to include persons at different committees… and that is why we had those set of meetings every month,” he stressed.
Sobers underscored that the GNBA Board was a professional one which consisted of PPP/C executive Bibi Shadick and contended that if she felt that there were any actions untoward, she would have been the first to object and make the claims public. Shadick, according to Sobers, was a signatory to cheques from the agency as “another number two signature” and this he believes is evidence of the strict accountability system in place.
“We had Sadie Amin on one Committee and we [had] PPP/C representative Bibi Shadick on the board. I am saying to you, we had a very professional board,” he added.
He said that he was disturbed that he would be asked about the payments and felt it was led by persons who wants to tarnish his name.
“I am disturbed that there are persons who seem to be going about to tarnish the diligent work of a professional. I am not a politician. I was employed not because of any party card, because I don’t hold a party card. I was employed for my experience and qualifications,” he said.
‘Positive’
The former GNBA Chairman related that when he took the position in 2017, the agency was in financial straits and the Board was able to bring it out of that position to one where when he left it had a surplus of over $200 million.
“When I took over there was a meagre sum of money in the account. Hear me, [it was] $26 million. So small was it that staff was afraid that sometime soon would come when they would not be paid. They were afraid of what was there,” he said.
“We, as a board, would have streamlined, regularized the wayward lawlessness that would have pertained and brought it to a position where at the end of 2017 it had gone up to almost $100 million, and by 2018 more than $200 million, and that continued in 2019. We left there with so much money that nobody would could go back to as they were,” he added.
He boasted that the agency was fully audited in 2017 and 2018 and “received favourable audit reports from the State Audit Department”. When the 2019 audit is done, he believes that it too will be a “positive report”.
The Chairman, who is also an attorney said that the public should also know that the $65,000 stipend for Board meetings was not raised from the 2012 amount when the PPP/C was in office.
Sobers doesn’t believe that there should be an issue of “double dipping” because he and the other Board member executed the job as CEO in a stellar manner. He also reasoned that if he were to dedicate the time he spent doing the CEO job at his law practice, he would have made more money.
For Guyana’s Attorney General, it is not an issue of revenue generation and management alone but that heads of agencies must be accountable if they personally benefited.
“It is now our fervent duty in Government to make them public, when they are discovered, so that the public can continuously be informed how a selected few benefitted from the gravy-train, while the ordinary Guyanese struggled to earn a livelihood,” Nandlall said.
