President Irfaan Ali yesterday asserted that the work of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) won’t be affected by the abrupt sending on leave of its Executive Director, Dr Vincent Adams and while he declined to provide reasons for the move he hinted at Adams’ political affiliation.
The decision of the new PPP/C government to send Dr Adams off on leave in the midst of important decision-making on ExxonMobil’s third proposed oil well, Payara has been criticised by a number of persons. Dr Adams is seen to be highly qualified for his post and has held polluters of the environment accountable.
Responding to questions from Stabroek News during a visit to East Canje, Berbice yesterday, Ali contended that the operations at the EPA will not be affected since the person he would have handed over to has twenty years of experience. Adams was instructed to hand over to Sharifa Razack but critics have said that she is in no position to handle matters at Dr Adams’ level. Razack is currently the Permit Review and Authorisation Manager and reports to the Director of Corporate Services.
The President said that he would not touch on reasons behind the decision to send Dr Adams on leave.
“I’m not going to give reasons because that is not my area but I can answer you from an institutional perspective”, he said.
Touching on whether Dr Adams being placed on leave would have any impact on the agency, Ali said, “The EPA is a agency with a lot of institutional capacity. Mr. Adams himself, his qualifications is not direct in the area of environment, he is well qualified in the area of oil and gas but his area of qualifications is not in environment, so somebody is holding there now with twenty years experience in EPA so I don’t see the work of the EPA being affected in any way”.
Additionally, the president pointed out that a new board was appointed, “… so we have to place people where their skillsets are best suited”.
He added, “While Mr. Vincent is a professional and we will be engaging him he also had a political role and we can’t escape that. We want to sometimes knowingly forget that some of these persons were actually on the campaign trail or on the stage on the campaign stage”.
He continued, “We need to have a professional pool in our country that work in a professional manner and when you cross into the political realm you have to understand that there are consequences … and there is a professional realm and a political realm, and Mr. Vincent has skillsets that the government would want to utilize in moving forward but as I said I see no difficulties in the work at the EPA at the moment”.
