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Consultant’s hiring at Transport Board questioned

by Randy Bennett
4 min read
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Shocked!

That’s how the former Quality Assurance Manager at the Transport Board Sylvan Codrington said he felt after learning that Trinidadian David Bartholomew had been hired as a consultant at the state-owned enterprise.

Speaking before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in Parliament this afternoon, Codrington said he was surprised Bartholomew was given the job as he had served in a different capacity while working in Trinidad.

He made the admission after PAC chairman Reverend Joseph Atherley asked him whether he believed it was an error to engage Bartholomew’s services as a consultant.

The Trinidadian was hired by the Transport Board in March 2016 on an initial six-month contract, to undertake the repair of 200 defective buses..

Codrington revealed that his duty as Quality Assurance Manager was to oversee all the engineering aspects for the Transport Board.

“When he came to Barbados as the consultant I was taken aback because when I visited the Trinidadian Bus Company he was deputy engineer with that company. Then months after I heard he was a consultant with us, so I was shocked,” replied Codrington, who was QA manager from 2005 to 2018 .

When further questioned by Atherley about his perception of Bartholomew’s effectiveness in the role, Codrington said, “It wasn’t coming over to me very clear as to what he was seeing because he was in one capacity and then he went into another capacity and operating as a consultant.”

Despite those views, Codrington said he worked closely with Bartholomew.

He said there was a spirit of cooperation between them even though from time to time “they had their differences with the engineering aspects of things”.

However, Codrington took issue with certain notes which Bartholomew made in respect of the operations of the Quality Assurance Department.

In a report handed over to the management of the Transport Board, Bartholomew claimed that personnel from the Transport Board’s Quality Assurance team had not visited service providers for an extended period and that there appeared to be a casual approach to the repair and return of buses.

“That is incorrect,” Codrington emphatically stated.

Bartholomew also suggested that the QA department lacked “the managerial and administrative skills needed to effectively monitor and manage the units at the external service providers…”

But in rebuttal, Codrington said while he had a staff of 30 persons working in that department, only five were sufficiently trained. He said there was also a need for more staff.

Codrington, who worked with the Transport Board for 46 years before retiring on December 31, 2018, denied that the QA department, which he managed, circumvented operating procedures at any time during his tenure.

“We did not circumvent any operating procedures. Not to my knowledge,” he contended.

In fact, Codrington said he considered his time in charge of the QA department a success noting that there over 100 buses in service, a far cry from the less than 70 in operation now.

“It was a success. Based on my knowledge and when I left office I had something looking like 115 or so buses on the road and now that I am out of office I was made to understand that there 50 and 70 [buses] and they aren’t making it into the hundreds at all,” Codrington said.
randybennett@barbadostoday.bb

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