PNM lawyers file FOIA request on Duke’s NGC appointment

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) at­tor­neys Ran­dall Mitchell and Stu­art Young have filed a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest, call­ing on the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to give de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on the hir­ing of Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke as an ad­vis­er/con­sul­tant to NGC.

This in­cludes Duke’s fi­nan­cial re­mu­ner­a­tion and all records on po­lice cer­tifi­cates of char­ac­ter.

The re­quest was sent to NGC via let­ter on Thurs­day. The at­tor­neys are act­ing on be­half of Con­gress of the Peo­ple field of­fi­cer Wen­dell Everse­ly.

Duke, a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), and NGC con­firmed this week that he was em­ployed as a con­sul­tant in hu­man re­sources and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions.

He is as­signed to the Cove In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in To­ba­go and will be of­fer­ing ad­vice on “hu­man re­source and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions is­sues” in both is­lands.

NGC has not giv­en a salary fig­ure for the post, nor has it in­di­cat­ed whether back­ground checks were done on po­ten­tial em­ploy­ees.

The PNM at­tor­neys called for all records, doc­u­ments and agree­ments per­tain­ing to Duke’s sta­tus, whether en­gaged per­son­al­ly or through any en­ti­ty, in­clud­ing the records in­di­cat­ing the le­gal ba­sis for such en­gage­ment (whether em­ploy­ee, in­de­pen­dent, con­trac­tor, con­sul­tant or oth­er­wise) and dates of com­mence­ment.

They al­so asked for:

• All records show­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions, ex­pe­ri­ence and/or ex­per­tise re­lied up­on by NGC in se­lect­ing and ap­point­ing Duke from cur­ricu­lum vi­tae to sup­port­ing doc­u­ments; plus any in­ter­nal as­sess­ments or eval­u­a­tions done pri­or to or con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly with the en­gage­ment.

• All terms of ref­er­ence, job de­scrip­tions, man­dates, scope of work or oth­er doc­u­ments defin­ing the func­tions, re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, de­liv­er­ables or ad­vi­so­ry role of Duke.

• All con­tracts, agree­ments, let­ters of ap­point­ment set­ting out the term/con­di­tions of en­gage­ments for Duke, in­clud­ing du­ra­tions, re­new­al pro­vi­sions and ter­mi­na­tion terms.

• All records con­cern­ing re­mu­ner­a­tion and fi­nan­cial agree­ments, in­clud­ing fees, stipends, re­tain­ers, al­lowances, ben­e­fits, meth­ods of pay­ment and to­tal sums paid or payable or payable to Duke, plus ap­proval, sched­ule or records of sums paid, payable whether agreed or pro­posed.

• All records per­tain­ing to Key Per­for­mance In­di­ca­tors (KPI), re­ports, rec­om­men­da­tions or out­puts ex­pect­ed of Duke.

• All records per­tain­ing to the pro­cure­ment, se­lec­tion and ap­proval process for Duke’s en­gage­ment from re­quests for pro­pos­als to sole source or di­rect award, and jus­ti­fi­ca­tions; plus all in­ter­nal ap­proval, in­clud­ing board, ex­ec­u­tive or man­age­ment ap­provals or min­is­te­r­i­al in­volve­ment.

• All records con­cern­ing over­sight, su­per­vi­sion and re­port­ing arrange­ments gov­ern­ing Duke’s en­gage­ment, plus per­for­mance ex­pec­ta­tions, de­liv­er­ables or eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria.

• All records re­lat­ing to con­flict of in­ter­est de­c­la­ra­tions, ethics dis­clo­sures, due dili­gence, po­lice cer­tifi­cates of char­ac­ter or com­pli­ance checks con­duct­ed in the en­gage­ment of Duke, in­clud­ing as­sess­ment of po­ten­tial or ac­tu­al con­flicts.