The state owned TSTT is paying Amalgamated Security Services Ltd over $65,000 a month to provide personal bodyguards for its acting chief executive officer Kent Western.
According to reports, the hiring of bodyguards for TSTT CEOs was discontinued under the tenure of former CEO Lisa Agard. It has now been reinstated.
Agard, in an Express report, said the hiring of private bodyguards was a facility that was available to the office of the CEO, but she felt this was a “wanton waste”.
“I took the very firm view that given TSTT’s financial predicament, TSTT was on the verge of bankruptcy up to two years ago; I took the view that having regard to the financial circumstances of TSTT, that spending within the company had to be carefully controlled and that the right tone as it relates to spending had to set right from the top of the organisation,” she said.
Agard added: “It is inappropriate that having regard to the dire financial straits, which have to be continued carefully if TSTT is to remain sustainable, that anyone in TSTT, including the CEO and the board, would allow such wanton wasteful expenditure.”
When asked by the media house if she was surprised and aware that the security measure was reinstated, Agard said: “I don’t know what the board was aware of, and whether or not that I did not avail myself of that facility. And I remain in contact with no one at TSTT, so I cannot say I was made aware; I am made aware by your outreach to me.”
Questioned whether she still holds the view that hiring private bodyguards for the CEO is a wanton waste, she responded “absolutely”.
Asked if during her tenure as TSTT’s CEO she ever received any threats to her life, Agard said there was none.
“None whatsoever. And we went through, as you would recall, a very serious restructuring of the company under which, unfortunately, we had to part ways with a substantial number of workers at TSTT, and during all of that, during that very difficult and challenging time of the company, we never received any threats whatsoever, and even in those trying circumstances, I did not feel the necessity to avail myself of private security,” she said.
Asked whether TSTT is still in a financial situation where it must still monitor its expenditure, Agard responded that there must be care in spending.
“Yes, absolutely. Because when you engage in the type of turnaround that we managed at TSTT, bringing it to a stage away from bankruptcy to the point where in financial year ending March 2023, it realised a profit for the first time in its six years, it has to be.