Was agreement signed with AES in Dominican Republic for L&G Gas?
PHILIPSBURG: --- It appears as though the Minister of VROMI Christopher Emmanuel is sleeping on the job. There are numerous matters that need the Minister’s attention at the Government owned company GEBE.
The Minister is supposed to appoint a member to the Supervisory Board, already he selected Claudius Buncamper for the position but it is understood that the Minister is being blocked by at least one member of the Council of Ministers to make the appointment. So far the seat vacated by now MP Romeo Pantophlet is not yet filled.
Besides that the current chairman of the Supervisory Board who is also the policy advisor at VROMI has been on “sick leave” for over a month now, yet the chairman Roy Marlin and other members of the Supervisory Board travelled with the management board to Jamaica to look at a Liquified Natural Gas (L&G) plant for engine 20. SMN News learned that the team from GEBE went to Jamaica Power Services (JPS) that is offering top of the line services. They traveled back to St. Maarten on Saturday.
However, it is still questionable why the Chairman of the Supervisory Board would travel on GEBE's expenses to micro-manage while being on sick leave? And what is the Minister doing about this kind of abuse of power at the government-owned company? Isn't this giving the Dutch government ammunition to push at all cost for the integrity chamber?
The question remains if the supervisory board of GEBE is micro-managing the government owned company and even if the members of the board went along with the management board, how is it possible for the chairman to go along while being on sick leave from his government job?
While researching this information SMN News learned that at least two members of the Supervisory Board namely the chairman Roy Marlin, Patrice Gumbs along with the Chief Executive Officer Kenrick Chittick travelled to the Dominican Republic at the end of January 2017 where they visited a company AES and allegedly a so-called agreement was signed with that company for the L &G plant. Noteworthy is that the leader of the UPP also met with the management of AES in the Dominican Republic to also work out an agreement with AES but that too fell apart when the UPP lost support in government.
Several persons are now questioning if certain Supervisory Board members at GEBE are traveling at the expense of GEBE to monitor what management is doing or are they micromanaging the company. Another question is the competency of the Management board which SMN News already wrote about in a previous article.
The Minister responded to questions by SMN News over a month ago about the health condition of the chairman and if he is medically fit to do the heavy work he is supposed to do at GEBE. Minister Emmanuel said back then that he would consider a medical evaluation of the chairman who was hospitalized not so long ago, but since then the Minister seemingly went to sleep on the matter.
