Not surprised!

PSOJ boss agrees with poll blaming Wheatley and Petrojam board for mismanagement at refinery

THE FINDINGS of an RJR-Gleaner commissioned Don Anderson poll, which shows that 27 per cent of Jamaicans hold the board of Petrojam, the state-owned oil refinery, responsibile for the issues outlined in the auditor general’s report, come as no surprise to President of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) Howard Mitchell.

According to Mitchell, good governance dictates that boards must be held primarily responsible for management issues.

“The statutory and legal responsibilities for the operation of a public body are reposed in the board of directors, so that logically, if there was mismanagement, and

if that mismanagement was of proportions that damaged the company, the board has to take the majority of the responsibility and hold the management of the company responsible,” Mitchell said yesterday in an interview with The Gleaner.

Last December, Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis released a damning report on the operations of the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) and its affiliate, Petrojam, pointing to “explicit acts of nepotism” at both entities and deficiencies in human-resource recruitment and management practices.

Of the people surveyed, 22 per cent believe that former Energy Minister Andrew Wheatley should be held responsible for the issues at Petrojam while 12 per cent blame Prime Minister Andrew Holness, eight per cent fingered the former general manager, and another eight per cent said that the previous People’s National Party administration should accept responsibility.