Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has re­moved two di­rec­tors from the board of the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Ltd (MTS), say­ing they were not ful­fill­ing their man­date and lacked the lev­el of com­mit­ment need­ed to help ad­dress long­stand­ing prob­lems at the State com­pa­ny.

Mitchell Ram­cha­ran and Ter­ry Ram, who were ap­point­ed to the MTS board on June 10, 2025, were re­moved by Padarath last week.

Ini­tial in­for­ma­tion re­ceived by Guardian Me­dia in­di­cat­ed that the two di­rec­tors had re­signed. How­ev­er, when con­tact­ed about the changes, Padarath said he had re­moved both men be­fore they sub­se­quent­ly ten­dered res­ig­na­tions.

“Both gen­tle­men were re­moved from the Board of MTS by my­self as line Min­is­ter last week. Sub­se­quent to their re­moval, they sub­mit­ted res­ig­na­tions,” Padarath told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia sought fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the min­is­ter on the pre­cise se­quence of events; how­ev­er, he re­it­er­at­ed that they were re­moved by him and then they re­signed.

Asked why he de­cid­ed to re­move Ram­cha­ran and Ram just over a year af­ter their ap­point­ments, Padarath said their pro­fes­sion­al com­mit­ments were af­fect­ing their abil­i­ty to do their jobs to the stan­dard he wants.

“They were not ful­fill­ing the man­date giv­en to them; their pro­fes­sion­al work sched­ules con­flict­ed with them meet­ing the de­mands of the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” Padarath said.

He said the de­ci­sion fol­lowed an eval­u­a­tion of their abil­i­ty to per­form their du­ties and sug­gest­ed that qual­i­fi­ca­tions and pro­fes­sion­al ex­pe­ri­ence alone were not enough to re­main on the board.

“There­fore, I had no hes­i­ta­tion in re­mov­ing them af­ter as­sess­ing their abil­i­ty to per­form. Some per­sons are high­ly qual­i­fied and ex­pe­ri­enced, but they do not have the lev­el of com­mit­ment that is some­times need­ed for an or­gan­i­sa­tion that has years of mess to clean up,” he said.

The lat­est re­movals prompt­ed Guardian Me­dia to ques­tion Padarath about what ap­peared to be a num­ber of per­son­nel changes tak­ing place on State boards since the Gov­ern­ment took of­fice.

Padarath, how­ev­er, pushed back against any sug­ges­tion that the changes were wide­spread, point­ing to the over­all num­ber of peo­ple serv­ing on State boards.

“First of all, there are hun­dreds of State boards with hun­dreds of ap­pointees. There have been a few re­movals from State boards un­der my Min­istry,” he said.

The min­is­ter said he would con­tin­ue to act in cas­es where he be­lieved di­rec­tors were not ad­e­quate­ly per­form­ing their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they were be­ing com­pen­sat­ed by tax­pay­ers for their ser­vice.

“I will not leave mat­ters re­gard­ing di­rec­tors’ in­abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly car­ry out their du­ties while re­ceiv­ing stipends from the State un­ad­dressed,” Padarath said.

Padarath did not in­di­cate whether re­place­ments for Ram­cha­ran and Ram had al­ready been iden­ti­fied or when the va­can­cies on the MTS board would be filled.

MTS, which falls un­der the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, pro­vides main­te­nance, train­ing and se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and is among the State com­pa­nies for which Padarath has line min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact both Ram­cha­ran and Ram for a re­sponse to Padarath’s ex­pla­na­tion for their re­moval.

Ram de­clined to com­ment on the Min­is­ter’s state­ment, say­ing on­ly that he would re­spect Padarath’s ac­count of the mat­ter.

Ram­cha­ran could not be reached for com­ment up to press time.