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GPL director Carvil Duncan defends $1M backpay
GPL Director, Carvil Duncan
Director of the Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL), Carvil Duncan, who is accused of unauthorisedly paying himself almost $1M in directors’ fees, has denied he did anything wrong.
In a statement to Kaieteur News yesterday, Duncan, General Secretary of the Guyana Labour Union and President of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG), made it clear that he was not the only one who received a retroactive hike of his directors’ fees.
On Wednesday, Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson disclosed that a forensic audit of the PetroCaribe Fund, which GPL benefited from, found a number of strange payments.
One was for $948,000 to Duncan, representing 48 months hike to his director’s fees.
Another was for over $27M to Deputy Chief Executive Officer (Administration), Aeshwar Deonarine.
The deputy chief of the state-owned power company has since been sent on leave and the matters handed over to police for investigations.
Patterson said that Duncan could not explain who authorized his fee hike as there is no evidence that it was approved.
A new Board of Directors is expected to be named shortly.
Below is a full statement by Mr. Duncan on the issue:
I wish to place on record my disagreement in an article published by the Kaieteur News dated 23′ July 2015.
Captioned “Worrying Times: GPL’s Director, Carvil Duncan”.
The fact of the matter is that I’ve been a director for GPL for over eight (8) years and was never paid a directors’ fee.
It was sometime in March 2015 at a (AGM) Annual General Meeting of GPL that it was agreed that directors’ fees for all state boards would be increased and (GPL) Guyana Power & Light would be in a position to pay directors’ fee.
The consensus was that based on the size of the entity. The director’s fee would be around $21,500 per month for meeting attended.
At the conclusion of that (AGM) Annual General Meeting of GPL, a board meeting was shortly called and the question of directors fee were raised, it was unanimous that the fees would be paid to all except two directors, who rejected the fees on the premise that they were employees of the government.
There was no consensus as to whether the fees would be retroactive for (48) forty eight months or when it should commence.
It was then suggested that clarity would be sought, notwithstanding that the fees were made up for forty eight (48) months for all directors who attended the meetings. The amount of ($948,000) nine hundred and forty eight thousand dollars was paid to me which reflected the meetings that I’ve attended, and not the total period of (48) forty eight months.
Having done an analysis it was discovered that Mr. Carvil Duncan was the longest serving director for being there for over eight (8) years, while other directors were going and coming, he was there all the time.
It is my understanding that all directors fees were made up and those who were entitled had received their fees.
It is rather strange therefore when it was expressed by this newspaper that I was consulted by the minister and had given him different explanations.
I have never had a conversation with the minister since he took office and as a consequence, the statement he had made in the newspaper cannot be attributed to me.
Carvil Duncan A.A Director GPL
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