…And he leaves salary that was sweeter than sugar

But that never happened and News Five went looking for answers today and found out that there’s more than meets the eye, including a hundred thousand dollar package and allegations of unaccountability.

Eric Ek, Chairman, Mgmt Committee, Belize Cane Farmers Assn.
“What happened with Mr. Magana is that his contract came to an end this end of the month and he asked me personally to sign his contract again. But the main reason why I never sign his contract was because I haven’t seen his contract before. And how can I sign his contract when I don’t know what is in the content of his contract. After revising his contract, the committee of management sat down in a meeting whereby we saw that he was getting a huge package as C.E.O. We were not saying that we were not going to sign his contract, but we were going to revise his contract, negotiate his contract and apparently Mr. Magana got mad because we were going to negotiate his benefit package. Mr. Magana’s salary was sixty thousand dollars per annum. He had a benefit package of twenty percent gratuity with seven thousand dollars medical insurance and close twelve thousand dollars house rent. That was what we were going to negotiate with him, but Mr. Magana took it in a different way and stated to me that if you want me to continue working for the association my contract stays as is.”

David Akierman, Former Treasurer, Cane Farmers Assn.
“To be honest, in my opinion as a farmer, I think he has accomplished next to nothing on his terms of reference. In modern business, you’re either qualified or not qualified. The Cane Farmers Association debt ahs risen in two years.”

Jules Vasquez, Channel Seven
“It’s over three million for the two…”

David Akierman
“It’s about two point six million and part of his terms of reference was to alleviate part of that. You have to show a trend, a reform, a trend, a movement decreasing the deficit. That wasn’t done. Internal receivables for the cane farmers was another area he had to work on. There’s a lot of owables to the association and the terms from what I understand from the terms of reference he should have at least recovered eighty percent of that. Nothing of that was done. Enough warning was given to him by the farmers as to his mode of operation of hiding a lot of vital information to the farmers. Lots of times we would hear things from the audience in general assembly and not from the management.”

Marion Ali
“What kind of information are you talking about?”

David Akierman
“All sorts of information; all sorts of—the negotiations with fair trade, the designing the program of how fair trade funds would be spent, who brought fair trade to Belize. Last year in 2008 I formed part of the Finance Committee for fair trade. I lasted two and a half months in there because his mode of operating violated all the rules from fair trade. I was the treasurer and I warned him that this would have repercussions okay. Stubborn, did not listen so eventually what happened, I decided to resign because it was totally against my policies, my beliefs of doing business.”

Marion Ali
“Would you term it as mismanagement?”

David Akierman
“Not capable of administrating the cane farmers affairs.”

Marion Ali
“But not corruption.”

David Akierman
“He was not transparent in the way he conducted his business.”

David Akierman said he had no problem with Magana’s benefit package but he did not achieve what he was expected to.