PHILIPSBURG:--- Workers of GEBE that are supporting William Brooks, the Temporary Manager that resigned from his post last week citing that he will wait on the shareholder representative to take a decision on his appointment as CEO called on Prime Minister William Marlin on Wednesday afternoon for an urgent meeting since they plan to take action if the shareholder do not appoint Brooks. SMN News understands that Prime Minister Marlin rushed over to the urgent meeting that lasted some hours.
While some of the workers that got perks and promises from William Brooks are fighting for his appointment through their union they fail to realize that the Brooks engaged in nepotism and conflict of interest when he appointed his brother to a senior position shortly after he was hired as a Temporary manager of the government owned company. Brooks then used $35,000.00 of the companies monies to purchase a vehicle for his brother all of which was mentioned in a letter to the Council of Ministers. On the day Brooks resigned he gave his brother a NAF4,000.00 increase on his salary, taking it way above his scale.
While the WIFOL/ASWE are supporting the workers who wanted Brooks on the job, they seem not to know that William Brooks plans to take away all the pension and medical benefits that GEBE is paying for its employees. According to information provided to SMN News Brooks informed the Supervisory Board of Directors when he was hired that he plans to implement some cost cutting measures through ‘cost control’ to take away the benefits the former chairman of the board of GEBE gave the employees. It is understood that Brooks had planned to implement these cost control measures as early as April 1st 2016.
It should be noted that the only Government owned company that pays these benefits for their workers is GEBE.
Reliable information reaching SMN News states that Brooks wanted to make GEBE equal to all the other government owned companies, yet he gave several managers huge increases in their salaries in order to gain their support.
SMN News further learnt that some of the workers plans to meet with the Prime Minister where they intend to ask the Prime Minister to send home the Supervisory Board of Directors whom they accused of being politically motivated. The source said that most of GEBE's problem is coming from the Supervisory Board because they are on top of the job when it comes to the day to day management of GEBE. The workers also said that they will not accept for the Minister of VROMI or Prime Minister to appoint Veronica Jenson Webster to the CEO position because she is not an engineer and in their view she knows nothing on how to manage a utility company.
Several phone calls placed to the president of WIFOL/ASWE Theophillus Thompson for a comment on the current situation went unanswered.
