Rowley's friend NUTRIMIX Mohammed is calling the shots

by PETER GREEN

Nutrimix Director SHAMEER RONNIE MOHAMMED receives his letter of appointment to the EMBD board from Agriculture Minister CLARENCE RAMBHARAT in December 2015

The Heritage and Stabilization Fund will soon be no more as the government plunders it almost monthly. Our national assets are being sold willy-nilly as the nation’s debt gallops to a colossal TT $98.9 billion.

Petrotrin has been shut down with no alternative plan in place except to try and secretly sell Paria Fuel. Now another prized gem in the nation’s limited assets is on the chopping block for sale and in this case, it is the National Flour Mills (NFM). The recent firing of four senior managers of the National Flour Mills (NFM) is not part of a restructuring exercise to make the company more efficient as has been mooted by its Chairman, Nigel Romano, who is also the Chief Executive Officer at JMMB. Reliable sources have advised that the State-owned enterprise is being primed for sale to one of the blue-eyed financiers of the Dr Keith Rowley People’s National Movement (PNM) administration. On March 15, 2019, news broke that NFM had fired its four general managers: GM - business support services Pamela Niamath, GM - sales and marketing Cheryl Lee Kong, GM – operations Cheryl Edwards and GM – Finance Robert Subryan.

NFM’s main competitor is Nutrimix

NFM Chairman Nigel Romano said the terminations were part of a restructuring exercise to make the NFM more efficient and effective. Romano said the company had 11 layers of management and should have been operating with half of that number. He promised that no non-management staff would be fired in the restructuring. Yeah right! Many persons are saying that Romano did not even have the mornal decency to call in the four Managers and explain to them the new vision, if any, for NFM. Senior PNM sources say there is a lot more going on in the background.

“NFM is up for divestment and the main competitor is Nutrimix,” one source said, pointing out the close ties between Nutrimix’ leadership and the Rowley administration.

Shameer Ronnie Mohammed is a top director in the Nutrimix Group of Companies. Following the PNM’s electoral victory in 2015, Mohammed was appointed Chairman of Caribbean Airlines Limited (CAL) and the Estate Management and Business Development Company (EMBD) – two top state boards. Mohammed has so much clout with the government that when his company turned the sod to start construction of its $30 million Next Generation Hatchery in August 2018, the Prime Minister, eight other Cabinet ministers and a parliamentary secretary attended the ceremony.

“You know how difficult it is sometimes to get just one minister to attend a function? Alternatively, to visit their constituency? Yet Nutrimix got nine ministers to attend their sod-turning ceremony, some of whom have no connection between their portfolio and his line of business!” the source noted. Present at the ceremony were PNM Deputy Political Leader and Minister of Works & Transport Rohan Sinanan, Foreign Affairs Minister Denis Moses, Agriculture Minister Clarence Rambharat, Trade Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon, Public Utilities Minister Robert Le Hunte, National Security Minister Stuart Young, Local Government Minister Haji Kazim Hosein, and Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture Senator Avinash Singh.

Hearing whispers

Nutrimix is in a similar line of business to NFM. Nutrimix has a flour manufacturing plant as well as plants for processing animal feed. According to Sunshine Today’s government source, it is highly unusual for any company to remove its entire executive management team in one shot. “We have been hearing the whispers that NFM is going to be put up for divestment. These kinds of drastic moves (firing the General Managers in one fell swoop) are the kinds of activities that precede divestment.

This is because the persons who want to buy or invest will say that before they make an expression of definite interest certain matters have to be dealt with. They will have their own people to bring in and they don’t want to have to be dealing with firing people and so on. So they tell the company to handle those things and then they will step into the scene,” the source said.

This development comes at the same time the Board of one of the companies (Paria Fuel Company) formed to replace the national oil company Petrotrin has been caught quietly trying to sell off another billion-dollar State asset, with the Line Minister, Franklyn Khan, claiming ignorance about the attempted sale.

Flashback August 2018: Nutrimix Director SHAMEER RONNIE MOHAMMED and PM Dr KEITH ROWLEY are flanked by seven senior government ministers and a parliamentary secretary at the sod turning ceremony for Nutrimix’s new hatchery

Turbulent period ahead for NFM

Just over a week ago, on March 16, 2019, the media reported that the Paria Fuel Company had been put on the market for sale.

Trinidad Petroleum Holdings Ltd (TPHL) Chairman Wilfred Espinet indicated that requests for proposals had been submitted both for the refinery and for the Paria Fuel Trading Company. Paria is one of four subsidiaries of TPH and oversees terminalling, fuel trading, product supply and logistics.

Espinet, who is also Paria’s Chairman, said the company’s business – importing fuel for the domestic and regional market – was not profitable and thus would need to be divested. But as public outrage mounted, Energy Minister Franklin Khan quickly sought to back-track. Khan issued a statement on March 18, 2019, saying that any RFP for the sale of Paria was issued “inadvertently”, would be withdrawn, and retracted.

The minister insisted that divestment of Paria is not on the agenda. PM Rowley, who returned to the country the following day after undergoing medical tests in the US, told the media that Paria is not up for sale but is open for persons who may have money and wish to enter into an arrangement whereby they take it over and run it.

Public suspicion has been rife since the announcement of the closure of Petrotrin last year that the oil company’s lucrative assets would end up in the hands of friends of the PNM government.

The workers at NFM, in a letter to Sunshine Today, last week stated that NFM Board Chairman, Nigel Romano, has treated them as cattle and they confirmed that there is a definite plan by the government to divest the company and give it to one of the PNM financiers and they pledge that they and their trade union, SWWTU, are not prepared to take the matter lying down. A turbulent period is now expected at NFM.