Questioning the legality of a motion of no confidence against his leadership as chairman of the Guyana Public Service Co-operative Credit Union, Trevor Benn yesterday told Stabroek News that he will not be stepping down from the post.
“I cannot step down because the committee does not have the authority for such a move,” he told this newspaper when contacted. According to Benn, he was not informed of a meeting nor did he give instructions for a meeting to be held. He countered that he was not aware that members of the management committee had an issue with his leadership as they never raised the issue or even asked him to respond to concerns.
“I am at a loss to say why this happened. I heard of this after the fact; that the motion was moved and the secret meeting was kept. What is the issue to trigger this meeting, I cannot say, I am still in the dark,” he told Stabroek News yesterday.
A faction from the management committee which was elected last year at the general meeting reportedly held a meeting unknowing to Benn and tabled the motion.
Benn, who served as the Chairman of the Interim Management Committee prior to taking up the role as a duly elected management committee member, explained that he only learnt of the order for him to be replaced as Chairman via social media. He stated that he was not informed by the secretary of any such move.
In a letter dated May 4, Chief Co-operative Officer (CCO), Debbie Persaud, wrote to Secretary of the Management Committee Board, Gillian Pollard, and informed her of the decision which was taken at a special committee meeting.
“Please be informed that the motion of no confidence against the Chairman Mr. Trevor Benn tabled at the Special Meeting of the Committee on the 21st April, 2022 is hereby acknowledged…Against this backdrop the said motion is tabled and voted by ten (10) members in favor of the motion to remove Trevor Benn as Chairman is hereby sanctioned,” Persaud said in her letter.
She went on to state that in the interim, the Vice Chairman of the committee is to perform the duties of chairman and that the committee should elect a chairman as soon as possible.
Benn however, argued that the advice of the CCO is ill-conceived as he was not given a hearing to allow for natural justice.
“It is illegal on all fronts and for the CCO to enforce that decision, it is illegal and undemocratic.”
He said that he is currently in consultation with members of the management committee to decide on the way forward.
Subsequent to the Annual General Meeting and Elections last year, some members had stated that there were irregularities in the election process.
The GPSCCU is currently led by a committee elected on April 11. This committee which comprises members of an Interim Management Committee, was installed in 2018. This newspaper understands that they were given a mandate by approximately 1,000 of the credit union’s 23,000 membership.
The elections, which were unofficially billed as a GPSU vs IMC event, also saw virtual voting, a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The process for this virtual voting and its execution was followed by a fully virtual Annual General Meeting, where the votes were counted, reportedly in a nonstandard manner. This prompted those GPSU candidates who lost the elections to cry foul.
And according to Ivelaw Henry, a GPSCCU member since 1979, members did not receive sufficient notice of the meeting nor was there, in his opinion, sufficient effort made to facilitate attendance of enough members at the virtual meeting.
“The notice of the Annual General Meeting and Agenda was first published once in the print media on Wednesday, 31 March, 2021, where the general membership of the GPSCCU was given eight working days’ notice of the meeting. Eligible members interested in contesting elected positions on the Committee of Management and/or Supervisory Committee were only given one-day notice for related nominations, where a notice was issued on the March 31st, 2021 and nomination opened and closed on 1 April 2021,” he recalled.
Former GPSCCU Board Chair Patricia Went also complained that at no time did the returning officer state the votes won for any individual candidate.
“They called no names. The ballots were counted by numbers they called out… The IMC members were listed first on the ballot, so I guess they were referring to them. If one was missing they would say vote for 1-12 except 3. No names ever,” Went declared, before adding that there is still no information on the number of votes cast for each candidate at each polling place.
Asked why these objections were not raised immediately after the elections, Dawn Gardener, first Vice President of the GPSU said they were “gathering information.”
“We needed to be sure of our information before we went public,” she responded.
