Jan­nelle Bernard

Se­nior Re­porter

jan­nelle.bernard@cnc3.co.tt

Em­ploy­ees of the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NP) are claim­ing that the com­pa­ny is un­sta­ble fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of CEO Derek Luk Pat last week, af­ter be­ing at the helm for a year.

He did not dis­close why he chose to leave, but sources claimed he cit­ed per­son­al rea­sons for his res­ig­na­tion.

Chester Beep­ut, gen­er­al man­ag­er of Avi­a­tion and Ma­rine Fu­els, has been ap­point­ed in­ter­im CEO.

Yes­ter­day, dur­ing a protest out­side NP’s of­fice at Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain, some em­ploy­ees ex­pressed con­cern, say­ing that the top man­age­ment had changed hands too many times.

Crys­tal Boldon, branch sec­re­tary of the OW­TU Port-of-Spain branch, told Guardian Me­dia that there was need for bet­ter gov­er­nance at the state en­ti­ty.

She said, “The work­ers are out here to high­light the fact that they feel un­set­tled over the sud­den res­ig­na­tion of the last CEO, Derek Luk Pat, which took place last Fri­day, No­vem­ber 1, with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. This would have been at least the fifth CEO in about sev­en years to leave the or­gan­i­sa­tion in one way, form or fash­ion. There is a lev­el of in­sta­bil­i­ty that per­vades the or­gan­i­sa­tion at this time. All of these things are hap­pen­ing un­der the chair­man­ship of Sahid Ho­sein, and we are say­ing that this in­sta­bil­i­ty, this out­look for the or­gan­i­sa­tion is not good.”

Luk Pat, a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my spe­cial­ist, busi­ness con­sul­tant and en­tre­pre­neur, re­ceived com­men­da­tions from the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny for his con­tri­bu­tions, which NP said cre­at­ed sus­tain­able rev­enue growth, in­creased prof­itabil­i­ty and op­ti­mal pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

On Fri­day, Chair­man of NP Sahid Ho­sein told Guardian Me­dia that claims the com­pa­ny was un­sta­ble were “ab­solute­ly not true.”

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, he said, “NP con­tin­ues to func­tion very well and per­forms all du­ties that are re­quired. There is no hia­tus caus­ing the com­pa­ny to fall apart. Most CEOs are hired on a con­trac­tu­al ba­sis for a three-year pe­ri­od; this is not un­usu­al.”

Ho­sein re­it­er­at­ed that Luk Pat’s res­ig­na­tion was be­cause of per­son­al rea­sons.

Ear­li­er this year, mem­bers of the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union protest­ed out­side of the home of NP’s Chair­man, Sahid Ho­sein, over al­leged nepo­tism and cor­rup­tion at the com­pa­ny.