Dookeran says son’s Eximbank dismissal unjust

Gail Alexan­der

Wrong­ful and un­just.

The de­ci­sion to fire Navin Dook­er­an from the post of CEO of the Ex­port-Im­port Bank of T&T (Ex­im­bank) was done wrong­ful­ly and was gross­ly un­just, says Navin’s fa­ther, Win­ston Dook­er­an, a for­mer Con­gress of the Peo­ple leader and Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment Fi­nance min­is­ter.

Dook­er­an, who was al­so a for­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor, in­di­cat­ed this in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

His son was fired as Ex­im­bank CEO last Fri­day. Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters of Fi­nance and in Fi­nance, Dave Tan­coo and Kennedy Swarats­ingh, have stood by the de­ci­sion.

But the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce, the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber, the Greater Tu­na­puna Ar­eas Cham­ber of Com­merce and the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers have ex­pressed con­cerns and un­ease about the is­sue. They’ve called for fair­ness, sta­bil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of for­eign ex­change fol­low­ing Navin Dook­er­an’s dis­missal.

Yes­ter­day, Dook­er­an se­nior, who is al­so a for­mer For­eign Af­fairs min­is­ter, said, “At the out­set, I must de­clare that Navin is my son. Last Fri­day, De­cem­ber 5, Navin called me to say that he has been sum­moned by the new chair­man, Mr Ed­win Chari­ah, who in­formed him that he was be­ing dis­missed as CEO with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

“I learned lat­er that there was no board de­ci­sion on the mat­ter, and his let­ter of dis­missal in­di­cat­ed no cause for his dis­missal.”

Dook­er­an added, “For clar­i­ty, it ap­pears that the nar­ra­tive for this dis­missal was the ‘in­equitable’ dis­tri­b­u­tion of for­eign ex­change, with par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence to the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor. This sen­ti­ment was echoed by sev­er­al of the busi­ness cham­bers, with some no­table ex­cep­tions.

“The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Mr Tan­coo, told the me­dia that it was part of the trans­for­ma­tion be­ing un­der­tak­en, lat­er re­in­forced on tele­vi­sion by the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Mr Swarats­ingh. Ear­li­er, all the da­ta on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of for­eign ex­change was made pub­lic.

“In my as­sess­ment of the da­ta, I could find no em­pir­i­cal va­lid­i­ty for this as­ser­tion, hav­ing al­so not­ed that the process for al­lo­cat­ing for­eign ex­change is set by gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, ap­proved by the board, while the CEO im­ple­ments such de­ci­sions.”

Dook­er­an said, “In my view, the de­ci­sion to fire the CEO was done wrong­ful­ly (no board de­ci­sion and with­out cause) from an em­ploy­ment con­tract per­spec­tive.

“Giv­en his per­for­mance over his tenure, he suc­cess­ful­ly turned around the Ex­im­bank of TT from loss­es to prof­itabil­i­ty that now con­tributes to the na­tion­al trea­sury of T&T (bal­ance sheets are on the bank’s web­site for any­one to see and in­ter­pret). Oth­er in­di­ca­tors will con­cur with this as a case study of a suc­cess­ful state en­ter­prise.

“An in­de­pen­dent, pro­fes­sion­al ad­vice is ad­vis­able in the pub­lic in­ter­est. In light of these fac­tors, I con­sid­er the dis­missal to be gross­ly un­just. While I do not wish to pro­long this agony, I, too, join with Navin in wish­ing the bank the best. “

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s query on Win­ston Dook­er­an’s state­ments yes­ter­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Tan­coo said, “Mr N Dook­er­an and/or his par­ent are en­ti­tled to his/their opin­ion, as is every­one else, in­clud­ing the small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es and clients of the Ex­im­bank.”

A spokes­woman at Ex­im­bank said Chari­ah was not in when he was con­tact­ed yes­ter­day and took a num­ber for him to re­turn the call. Up to press time, how­ev­er, he had not re­turned the call.

He was al­so con­tact­ed lat­er on and sent queries via What­sApp, but didn’t re­spond to ques­tions on Win­ston Dook­er­an’s claim that there was no Ex­im­bank board de­ci­sion on Navin Dook­er­an’s dis­missal; that the lat­ter’s let­ter of dis­missal gave no cause for his dis­missal; for de­tails on how the dis­missal arose; and for com­ment on the con­cerns cit­ed by sev­er­al busi­ness cham­bers on the sit­u­a­tion.