Phyllis Thomas and Tyrone Reid, Enterprise Editor/Staff Reporters
Alston Stewart ... exucutive chairman. - File
A MEMBER of the board of the National Solid Waste Management (NSWMA) who resigned in frustration nine months ago believes that some members who remain should resign as well.
Steve Khemlani, the former deputy chairman of the board made his exit in June last year. However, while he supports calls for the resignations he does not believe that there should be an enblock resignation.
"Some members of the board, I don't think, have anything to contribute," he told The Sunday Gleaner. "Maybe they are talented in other areas but I don't think they contribute anything being there."
The board went into yet another meeting yesterday. This, amid calls for its removal, since the scandal broke last week of widespread corruption, activities which have plunged the authority in debt totalling $200 million and failure, for two consecutive years, to hand over its financial statement to the auditor-general. Minister of Local Government Portia Simpson Miller, ordered an investigation into the operations of the NSWMA after an emergency meeting on March 1.
The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), joining those who said heads should roll for the NSWMA fiasco, wants the entire board dismissed.
"The prime minister should dismiss the chairman and all members of the board of the NSWMA and appoint an interim board with all new members, in order to put an immediate stop to the rot taking place at the authority," Pearnel Charles, Opposition spokes-man on local government said last week.
But Mr. Khemlani does not support the wholesale sweep of the board which the JLP has called for saying, "It's very difficult to broad-brush the whole picture. Some are well qualified and others are just not," he said.
He also does not think that the NSWMA needs an executive chairman. Instead, he said, there should be a managing director and chairman, for transparency.
DIFFERENCES OF OPINION
Mr. Khemlani resisted The Sunday Gleaner's attempts to get him to reveal details of the operations at the NSWMA that caused him to walk out on the state-run agency which oversees all the public cleansing operations. He said, however: "There were differences of opinion between me and the executive chairman on how the finances of the company and the record keeping should be done. There was lack of co-operation and I was frustrated."
The former board member was critical of the NWSMA's book keeping and asset registry saying that they were "not up to scratch".
"The asset registry is not maintained. In fact, I don't even know if they have an asset registry. I never saw one," Mr. Khemlani said.
Meanwhile, at least one member is dissociating himself from much of the problems in the organisation. Steve Ashley, deputy chairman, told The Sunday Gleaner that his head should not be in the bunch that the JLP has said should roll.
"I just went on the board a month ago, so I am not a part of the fiasco, (however), it is the minister's prerogative to take that decision after she has reviewed the evidence," said Mr. Ashley.
Another member of the board, Bevon Morrison, preferred to stay clear of the controversy.
"I can't comment. I decline to comment," she insisted.
