P.M. says NICH Board cannot fire Diane Haylock
The New Year has started in earnest with more internal problems for the Barrow Administration. Early this afternoon, Minister of Culture Marcel Cardona was summoned by Prime Minister Dean Barrow. The trip to Belmopan has to do with the ongoing saga involving a contract between NICH President, Diane Haylock and David Gegg’s Zip Line Adventures that became public last week and incurred the wrath of the NICH Board that claimed it was not consulted on the matter. The Board met for long hours on Tuesday and recommended among other things to terminate Haylock. That was on Tuesday but by the end of the afternoon today, matters had changed dramatically. Haylock is a known protégé of the P.M. and the meeting with the P.M. did not go Cardona’s way. A release from the office of the Prime Minister says that the Employment Agreement under which the Board purported to Act is invalid. What’s more, the PM has now instructed Cardona that the termination of Haylock is null and void. And why? The PM’s office maintains that it is the Minister who appoints the President and only he can terminate the appointment. As to what happens next, Cardona can raise the matter in cabinet if he so chooses. But for now Haylock has prevailed and as for Cardona, his own ministerial appointment is said to be in the balance after this public rebuff.
But back to Tuesday, the meeting which had in attendance five of seven members, voted four to one in favour of Haylock’s termination. Haylock, and other board member, Herman Byrd, are both away on vacation. The five present included: Judy Collier as Pro-tem Chairperson of the Board, Tony Wright, Mamie Martinez, Carmita Ruiz and Osiris Rodriguez. Of the five, one abstained from voting.
At the end of that meeting the board came up with four resolutions which it made public in its own release: to direct David Gegg to halt construction of the facility; to appoint the law firm of Pitts and Elrington as their official lawyers to deal with this issue, to confirm that at no time before December nineteenth did Haylock or any senior official or member of the NICH staff inform or request the views of the NICH Board; and finally, to confirm that at no time did the Board approve the project.
This is what Board member Isiris Rodriguez had to say.
Isiris Rodriguez, NICH Board Member
“We didn’t authorize any entrance to the contract nor were we informed of the intent or a proposal by Mr. David Gegg and no, we didn’t adapt or ratify the contract. I will quote from the NICH Act part two section fourteen, which says the President shall be responsible for the management of the Institute in accordance with the provisions of the Act and any regulations made hereunder in accordance with the policies established by the Administrator, which means that she is to advise the Board on programmes and projects to be carried out in pursuance of the objects of the Institute and she did not. She went against what is said in the Act.”
Marion Ali
“Don’t you have similar agreements with other concessioners similar to this just of smaller magnitude and its called concessions?”
Isiris Rodriguez
“Ok, well the problem here was that he was going to have exclusivity, as in no other tour operator was going to be allowed to place a stand on premises. As far as I know, in many other sites, there are more than one tour operators or concession stands set up and this is providing him exclusivity.”
Early this morning it was known that the NICH Board had prematurely taken over control of Haylock’s desk but by close of today, Rodriguez was asking to withdraw his interview.
The ten year agreement with David Gegg of Zip Line Adventures is for the construction of a restaurant and gift shop facility at the NICH-run Nohoch Che’en Archaeological Reserve six miles off the Western Highway at mile thirty-eight.
