est. 2007

Barbados Underground

Bringing News and Opinions to the People

Are There Barbadians On The C&W Board?

We have followed with keen interest the recent resignations of senior executives at C&W Jamaica, rebranded LIME. Yesterday the Jamaica Gleaner published the most recent resignation of Eduardo Ryan, the CFO of LIME Jamaica which was preceded by Phil Green who was President for just under a year. The usual mundane explanations have been given to explain the resignation but we are sure the BU family agrees that there is more to the two resignations than meets the eye.

Jamaica is the telecommunications market where we have seen Cable and Wireless aka LIME and Digicel duke it out to the full benefit of the consumer post-deregulation. Again we note with interest that a recent request for a 21% increase for landline calls to Digicel mobile phones which was matched by LIME has commanded the immediate attention of Minister of Communications Derrick Smith. The Jamaican press has reported that he has  scheduled a meeting with the two companies to address his concern at the rate hike.

Can the Jamaican telecommunication companies increase rates when they feel like it?

The proactive action by Minister Derrick Smith has reminded us of that time when former Minister Ronald Toppin in the former government resigned abruptly. At the time he had responsibility for the Fair Trading Commission (FTC)  which was struggling with the roll-out of the telecommunications deregulation for Barbados. Mr. Toppin has never felt any obligation to inform the PEOPLE why he resigned. However we the public has inferred from his subsequent pronouncements that there was some disagreement surrounding decision-making at the FTC.

It is a measure of the kind of representation which Barbadians have tolerated over the years which has allowed Ronald Toppin to be re-elected to parliament and not have to answer to the people by giving an explanation regarding his resignation. This will be a big part of his legacy. The Minister who resigned for a principle but priced his loyalty to the party above being honest with the PEOPLE who elected him to serve.

Barbadians should follow with interest the outcome of Minister Derrick Smith’s meeting with LIME and Digicel in Jamaica.

On the subject of LIME we did a Google to ascertain who comprised the Cable and Wireless Barbados Board of Directors and the following names were returned:

  • Senator Sir Allan C. Fields, KCMG – Chairman
  • Dr. J. Patricia Alleyne
  • Mr. Donald St.C. Austin
  • Professor Sir Hilary McD. Beckles, K.A.
  • Mr. Bernard P.J. Buckley
  • Mr. Richard H. Dodd
  • Mr. Dodridge D. Miller

To be honest we are happy at the calibre of Barbadians who sit on the Cable and Wireless Board of Directors (highlighted). Our problem is our inability to reconcile recent decisions to rebrand to LIME, and the proposed sending home of employees after raking in huge profits among other decisions. The BU household refuses to believe that this is a Board which would rubber stamp directives from London without seeking to determine relevance.

For what it is worth, BU wishes to ask the distinguished Barbadians who sit on the C&W Board to do some soul searching, find a way to let Barbadians understand how our market that has been so generous to C&W over the years can today be so easily screwed. We would encourage members of the BU family et al to ask the Barbadian C&W Board members via whatever communication channel they feel comfortable.

17 responses to “Are There Barbadians On The C&W Board?”

  1. David Avatar
    David

    Interesting to hear reports that TeleBarbados has been signing up hundreds of Barbadians for Broadband in recent weeks. They have indicated that they have been forced to upgrade their network.

    Hope the BU family will feedback on their experience with TeleBarbados.

  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Has anyone noticed who hilary beckles is aligning himself with these days?

    It’s the allan fields and the Cow Williams and jeffrey cave of this world.

    This is why he was laughed to scorn in the 1980’s when he was pretending to fight for black people re the mutual affair,yet he was making sure his children didn’t mix with the other black pickneys at charles.f.broomes,but instead they were going to st gabriel’s nursery school.

    I will always argue that the so-called mutual fight was really all about hilary beckles making a name for himself in a small closed society where he was virtually an ‘unknown’.

    He was making a path to the destination he is now at.

    A pure opportunist,that man.

    H e was a D when it was politically correct and safe to be a D,then he switched to sucking up to arthur when the tides turned,and the result was he was made principal of UWI.

    Now we see he is on the board of LIMe and not speaking out for the same poor man he was shouting and protesting for at the Mutual in the 80’s.

    Some people have no shame at all.

  3. Knight of the Long Knives Avatar
    Knight of the Long Knives

    I think Hilary looks after Hilary’s interest and no one else.

  4. David Avatar
    David

    Sir Hilary has decided aligned himself with corporate to be able to finance the university. Some will say it is a worthy strategy and other will say that he is sacrificing too much to do so. BU sides with the latter. His history making fight in the Mutual Affair may have been forgotten by him.

    We wonder how he feels sitting on the Board of the international company C&W which has exploited Barbados and the region at will and now at a time which may prove the most challenging economically they plan to stay true to their shareholders.

    We don’t blame C&W if our brightest Black people do nothing but by remaining puppeteers.

  5. Chris Halsall Avatar
    Chris Halsall

    @BU.David…

    With respect, I would like to suggest slightly reframing your immediate above.

    I would argue that it is the moral responsibility of *all* *stakeholders* to take time for a serious consideration of their influence.

    “Stakeholders” is a meta group; a superset of all Shareholders, all Customers, all Consumers, all Employees, all Regulators, and all Board Members.

    IMHO, every Stakeholder is responsible for the ramifications of their individual actions (or inactions…).

    For what the above is worth….

  6. Chris Halsall Avatar
    Chris Halsall

    Sigh… Like a Persian Rug… There are always mistakes…

    A change to my immediate above. In the Geek: s/refraining/re-framing/

  7. David Avatar
    David

    @Chris

    We hear you and we feel you but we believe that although the text books speak to the loyalty to shareholders, for a company like C&W we prefer to redraft that rule. We have been raped by them and reparations need to be paid.

  8. Avatar
    Anonymous

    David

    That post by someone on your team above this last one needs some cleaning up.

    It is a little confusing.

  9. General Lee Avatar
    General Lee

    David if you have consented to participate in the act, at what when point does it become rape?

  10. General Lee Avatar
    General Lee

    If after the realisation that we are being raped, do we keep still and hope that someone will come to our aid or do we fight to save ourselves?

  11. David Avatar
    David

    @General Lee

    There is the psychological trauma of being repeatedly raped which breeds irrational behaviour.

  12. Chris Halsall Avatar
    Chris Halsall

    @David…

    And to whose advantage is this behavioural response?

    Similarly, the response to constant messages of fear? Data point: Interestingly, yesterday almost every financial market reported net gains.

    And yet the news reports fear-mongering interpretations of the dropping price of commodities. (Let’s only report deltas over the last twelve months; let’s ignore over the last 10 years…)

    Please correct me if I’m wrong, but should not dropping raw materials be *good* for consumers? (Importantly, the Shareholders set are not to be co-mingled with the Consumers set when answering this rhetorical question…)

    IMHO, it is to everyone’s best interests to focus one’s energy on one’s easiest (read: least expensive, most possible) achievable goals.

    This is not to mean that long term injustices cannot be addressed in the future. In fact, I would argue that early “wins” can be used as evidence for further work.

  13. Adrian Hinds Avatar
    Adrian Hinds

    Hillary “Bullets” Beckles put his life and livelihood on the line for bunch of ungrateful, people, who till this day refuse to lift a finger to help themselves, holding out for that great messiah and leader to fight on their behalf. Wunnuh always want change without risking wunnuh two cents! Can any of you recall his actions as they were publish in his book “the Mutual affair”, a book that cannot be found anywhere now, except probably for the copy i still have?

  14. Adrian Hinds Avatar
    Adrian Hinds

    Can anyone shed any light on the following ?

    “The attempted ‘coup’ of the Council of
    the Barbados Museum in 1989,”

    and

    “Jocelyn Gardner a white Barbadian, who explored the role of whiteness, creolity, history and race in a series of installations at the Barbados Museum in 2004.
    The exhibition was accompanied by a debate on race which played to a
    packed and engaged audience.”

  15. Adrian Hinds Avatar
    Adrian Hinds

    The discussion on Race relations in Barbados has been stiffle on the Rock, but not elsewhere.

    http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/wgmn_papers/mary_chamberlain_paper.pdf

  16. David Avatar
    David

    @Chris

    Your comment is to deep for the poor rakey BU household. All we can say is that there are other stakeholders in the Estates of the Rhelm. If the PEOPLE are not getting it the government, press et al must step up to the plate for the good of the whole.

  17. David Avatar
    David

    Wonder what the BU family thinks about the pow wow going on between LIME and Digicel. What is the role of the regulator in our market? Is this a case of the two elephants disrespecting our regulators?

The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.

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