KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, March 30 2015 – The Chairman of LIAT’s shareholder prime ministers, Dr. Ralph Gonsalves on Monday said he has full confidence in the airline’s Chief Executive Officer David Evans.
“I want to say that I have not received from any shareholder any information that they do not have confidence in the CEO or the management and I myself I have confidence in the CEO,” Gonsalves said during a press conference here.
“Certainly, the chairman of the board of directors, who I spoke to, I happen to know that he has confidence in the CEO. So, I want to make those points clearly,” Gonsalves said.
The Vincentian leader also warned against making unflattering statements about the regional airline, saying it could undermine confidence in the business operations of the carrier.
“Everyone who is involved with LIAT, the shareholders, the directors, the management, the workers, everybody, has to be careful what they say and what they do in relation to this matter. It is a business, and anything anybody says or does, at any of these levels, could affect the confidence of the business,” Gonsalves said.
On Sunday Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne said he would treat as “treason’ a plan for a new airline to compete with LIAT.
Browne, speaking on a privately owned radio station said that he would also be seeking the resignation of the airline’s chief executive officer if it turned out he orchestrated the plan.
LIAT is owned by the governments of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Browne said that his administration would resist efforts to shift the airline’s fleet base to Barbados but Gonsalves again defended the decision saying it was made based on the revenue generated and passenger loads along LIAT’s routes.
“Now, it is public knowledge that the government of Antigua and Barbuda, through its prime minister, said that they want this restructuring decision to be put on hold. But until a shareholders’ meeting says that those decisions must be put on hold, the board and the management are obliged to carry out the decisions of the shareholders. And as chairman of the shareholders, I have received no request from anyone for a meeting of the shareholders,” he said.
“In the same way that I respect the good governance arrangements in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, I respect the good governance arrangements in a company. That’s the only way that things can be run in a proper manner. I am not saying that these decisions can’t be amended, altered, if other views are brought to the table and they are meritorious in all the circumstances.
“But, from the stand point of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as I had explained before, if I didn’t feel that they were decisions which were in the interest of the company, I would have demurred at that point of the shareholders meeting and to see if I can convince my colleagues of a different perspective.
“But there was no attempt by anybody to convince anyone of any perspective other than around this bundle of issues on which decisions were taken,” Gonsalves said, pointing out that St. Vincent and the Grenadine has paid its US$592,000 share of the five million dollar working capital the airline needs until a financing meeting with the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) in May.
“I am hopeful that all the governments will make their payments,” Gonsalves said, adding that he understands that Dominica has paid, he didn’t know if Barbados had paid, but was “pretty sure” that Antigua and Barbuda was yet to pay.
“If the analysis [says] you need this money for the working capital and that is to carry you to the month of May, hoping you can get to the CDC board, any set of dissonance, whether it is by any shareholder, or any group of workers – be they the pilot or engineers or other workers who are neither pilots nor engineers – or the management, any dissonance in words or action can create a great difficulty,” Gonsalves said.
“This is a very serious matter which affects the social and economic well being in this area and I am unable, constitutionally or otherwise, to embrace recklessness on this subject.
“And I hope that by reiteration of confidence in the management and the board and in the light of the decisions which were taken by the shareholders, that any alterations required, there is a process and there is a system for which any of these challenges can be appropriately addressed.
“What is certainly not appropriate is for important discussions to be held on this matter across the Caribbean Sea, which, whether intended or not, may have an effect of undermining confidence in the operations of the airlines,” Gonsalves said.
