PHILIPSBURG--The Corporate Governance Council (CGC) reported on its first year of activities on Friday by outlining the positives, negatives and what it hopes will change moving forward.
CGC Chairman Louis Duzanson lamented the fact that the council is requested to render advice on a regular basis, but can't count on government to extend common courtesy to the CGC regarding its operations.
He said the CGC continued to receive "practically no response from government to our communication." He said that while the CGC understood that much was going on in government, and this had been the case since the CGC was installed in February 2010, "we find it difficult to accept, because the modus operandi of government is not guaranteeing us that there is proper dialogue."
Duzanson said the CGC still had no office space out of which to operate out, no support organisation and no approved budget. The budgets for 2010 and 2011 have been submitted with no word from government, resulting in no member of the CGC ever being paid. He said the CGC had taken note of media reports that it would receive a start-up advance, but had yet to receive any confirmation of this or instruction about what needed to be done.
He said this was a good example of no dialogue with government. "Things that concern us are not communicated to us. We only learn of and about us from media reports," Duzanson said. "So far we've worked on goodwill and for the love of St. Maarten." He added that the CGC now had to determine how far into the future that goodwill would extend.
He also said the CGC had not received a response to the letter it had sent to the Council of Ministers and Parliament requesting certain information that would allow it to continue functioning. A plan of action also has been submitted and, although there is now cause to update the plan, no communication has been received from government on the initial plan of action.
On the positive side, Duzanson said members of the CGC had grown to know each other during the past year, to communicate well with each other, work well together and trust each other. The CGC also has adopted a code of conduct on how its members will conduct their tasks.
"We have shared this code of conduct with government and suggested it would be good practice for government-owned companies to go through the same process. We have not heard from government on this," he said.
Continuing on positive aspects, he said the CGC had been able to educate others about matters of corporate governance, had studied the legislative framework for corporate governance in government-owned companies of St. Maarten, and had studied the corporate governance code and more. The CGC also organised a seminar on corporate governance in November 2010.
He also noted that the CGC had duly "executed the duty entrusted to us and rendered the advice requested regarding proposed appointments to the boards of supervisory directors of government corporations."
He said the CGC also had rendered un-requested advice on matters of concern about government-owned companies and had met with government only three times since its installation, with the last time being in January. He said very little could be derived from that meeting, as government was good at listening, but offered very little in return to initiate dialogue.
London Neal Ardley Motherwell Luis Moreno-Ocampo Sir Alex Ferguson Eric Pickles
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