Authorities still mum on NCN fraud report

It has been well over a year since fraud allegations within the National Communications Network (NCN) have been made public. However,

Programme Manager, Martin Goolsarran

President Donald Ramotar, who made promises to deal with the issue in its entirety, has seemingly forgotten the assurances he made to the nation.
NCN, like the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) early last year June, found itself being probed for financial irregularities. On the part of NCN, one area of irregularity was traced back to GT&T and involved millions of dollars in advertisements and production costs.
The specific terms of reference of the NCN’s probe which was requested by the board of directors were to “specifically investigate allegations of financial irregularity occurring from September 2011 to February 2012 and with regards to the account for the GT&T Jingle and song Competition”.
NCN’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mohamed ‘Fuzzy’ Sattaur resigned later the very month. The company’s Programme Manager, Martin Goolsarran who had admitted that he had deposited the payment cheque from (GT&T) into his personal account, was suspended.
Sattaur and Goolsarran had been granted 72 hours to respond to some of the observations contained in the report, to which they did.
The auditors’ probe was handed to NCN’s Board of Directors headed by Dr. Prem Misir which in turn did its own follow up investigation and handed its report to the Minister of Information, who in this case is Head of State, Donald Ramotar.
That probe had similar findings to the initial one and included the fact that there were severe managerial problems at the state-owned company hence, the recommendations, which included severing ties with Sattaur.
Since those developments, President Ramotar had several promises to make public the Board’s report and take other necessary action; but nothing has been forthcoming
Meanwhile, there has been no new appointment as Michael Gordon has been acting as CEO and Wendy Hermonstine is the acting Production Manager. However, Kaieteur News has learnt that Goolsaran has been officially taken off of NCN’s payroll.