NIBTT executive director announces early retirement

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NIBTT) ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Niala Per­sad-Po­li­ah will re­tire ear­ly on De­cem­ber 13, end­ing a 23-year ca­reer with the or­gan­i­sa­tion, in­clud­ing 12 years as its ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor.How­ev­er, no rea­son has been giv­en for her ear­ly re­tire­ment.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained the let­ter, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 14, from Per­sad-Po­li­ah to NIBTT chair­man Judy Kalloo, in which she for­mal­ly gives no­tice of her re­tire­ment.

“This de­ci­sion was a dif­fi­cult one and was made af­ter care­ful re­flec­tion,” Per­sad-Po­li­ah wrote.

She said it was a priv­i­lege to serve the or­gan­i­sa­tion and ex­pressed grat­i­tude for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute to its man­date and strate­gic di­rec­tion.

“My pas­sion has al­ways been ser­vice to our cus­tomers and staff,” she wrote, adding she had ap­proached her re­spon­si­bil­i­ties with “a deep com­mit­ment to those we serve, and strong ad­vo­ca­cy for the preser­va­tion of the fund.”

Per­sad-Po­li­ah, who is around 52 years, al­so pledged to fa­cil­i­tate con­ti­nu­ity of lead­er­ship and op­er­a­tions be­fore her re­tire­ment.

When con­tact­ed for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the rea­sons for her ear­ly re­tire­ment, she said she had no com­ment.

Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day re­ceived cor­re­spon­dence from a se­nior NIBTT em­ploy­ee which raised a se­ries of con­cerns about gov­er­nance and over­sight at the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The em­ploy­ee high­light­ed the com­po­si­tion and suit­abil­i­ty of sev­er­al mem­bers of the NIBTT board, giv­en the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for a Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Fund (NIF) val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $30 bil­lion.

The em­ploy­ee ques­tioned whether for­mal suit­abil­i­ty as­sess­ments had been con­duct­ed be­fore the ap­point­ments and if doc­u­men­ta­tion ex­ists to sup­port the as­sess­ments.

The em­ploy­ee al­so raised con­cerns about the ef­fec­tive­ness of the board’s de­ci­sion-mak­ing, claim­ing meet­ings reg­u­lar­ly run for six to nine hours while sig­nif­i­cant mat­ters re­main un­re­solved.

An­oth­er con­cern in­volves the board’s In­vest­ment Com­mit­tee. The em­ploy­ee claims the com­mit­tee has not been con­vened since the ap­point­ment of the cur­rent board, rais­ing ques­tions about in­vest­ment gov­er­nance and over­sight of the NIF.

Ref­er­ence was made to sec­tion 24(1) of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Act, which pro­vides for an In­vest­ment Com­mit­tee com­pris­ing the chair­man, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer and three oth­er board mem­bers nom­i­nat­ed by the min­is­ter, busi­ness and labour re­spec­tive­ly.

The em­ploy­ee al­so raised an al­leged com­pli­ance ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty in­volv­ing a se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny. The claim is that a di­rec­tor in­struct­ed a staff mem­ber to is­sue a com­pli­ance cer­tifi­cate de­spite the com­pa­ny al­leged­ly not sat­is­fy­ing the ap­plic­a­ble re­quire­ments.

The em­ploy­ee fur­ther al­leges the mat­ter was re­port­ed in­ter­nal­ly but was not ap­pro­pri­ate­ly ad­dressed.

Ques­tions were al­so raised about pro­cure­ment, in­clud­ing the can­cel­la­tion and sub­se­quent re-ini­ti­a­tion of a pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise and al­leged con­nec­tions be­tween a com­pa­ny and a mem­ber of the NIBTT board.

The em­ploy­ee called for the rel­e­vant pro­cure­ment records, eval­u­a­tion doc­u­ments, board min­utes and de­c­la­ra­tions of in­ter­est to be in­de­pen­dent­ly re­viewed.

Con­cerns were fur­ther raised about the ap­point­ment of an act­ing ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, de­spite there re­port­ed­ly be­ing 13 more se­nior suit­ably qual­i­fied ex­ec­u­tive man­agers, chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cers and se­nior man­agers with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

There are al­so claims that some board mem­bers have used per­son­al email ac­counts for NIBTT busi­ness. If sub­stan­ti­at­ed, the prac­tice could raise ques­tions around in­for­ma­tion se­cu­ri­ty, records man­age­ment, con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and the preser­va­tion of of­fi­cial records.

The em­ploy­ee fur­ther claimed that the an­nu­al bud­get and cor­po­rate tar­gets had not yet been con­sid­ered and ap­proved by the board, which could af­fect or­gan­i­sa­tion­al pri­or­i­ties, au­tho­rised ex­pen­di­ture and man­age­ment ac­count­abil­i­ty.

The em­ploy­ee drew com­par­isons be­tween the con­cerns at NIBTT and gov­er­nance is­sues re­cent­ly raised in re­la­tion to the First Cit­i­zens Bank board, but ac­knowl­edged that the al­le­ga­tions re­quire in­de­pen­dent ver­i­fi­ca­tion.

The em­ploy­ee said the pur­pose of bring­ing the mat­ters for­ward was to en­sure the ap­pro­pri­ate au­thor­i­ties ex­am­ine the un­der­ly­ing records and de­ter­mine whether the NIBTT is op­er­at­ing in ac­cor­dance with its statu­to­ry oblig­a­tions, poli­cies and cor­po­rate gov­er­nance prin­ci­ples.

Per­sad-Po­li­ah’s let­ter did not iden­ti­fy any of the gov­er­nance is­sues raised by the em­ploy­ee as a rea­son for her re­tire­ment.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day con­tact­ed Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo about Per­sad-Po­li­ah’s ear­ly re­tire­ment and the con­cerns raised about gov­er­nance and op­er­a­tions at the NIBTT by the em­ploy­ee. How­ev­er, Tan­coo said he had no com­ment.