The Tribune

By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

MANAGERS at the National Insurance Board defended Director Algernon Cargill yesterday claiming he is being “victimised” by the PLP for “enforcing the rules and doing his job”.

The managers, who want to remain anonymous for fear they will lose their jobs, denied that Mr Cargill abused millions of dollars of public funds. They claim that he is being “set up” by the government.

“They are trying to force him out, victimise him and humiliate him in the eyes of the public by making people believe he is doing things that are not true. First of all when Mr Cargill and his team came they met a lot of policies and procedures on the books that were not being adhered to and so when he enforced the rules there were people, including union heads, who were not happy that they were no longer going to have their way. So they wanted to get rid of him by any means necessary,” one manager said.

“Everybody knows that with every change of the government they normally change the executives. If you come into power and want to change then you can do it without humiliating them. With all the stories in the paper, it looks as though Mr Cargill was stealing money and making deals under the table. But it needs to be noted that every decision he made had to go through the Board of Directors. Most of the things he did were for the benefit of the staff. The $60,000 they claim he spent were to purchase laptops, cell phones and iPads for the staff over the past four years. Also a lot of it went into travel for different departments but most of it went to the IT department to better the computer systems at NIB.”

The managers also claim that if it were not for Mr Cargill the government would have lost millions of dollars in overdue payments.

They also claimed the government knew that Mr Cargill rented an apartment from one of his family members because it was the government that signed off on it.

“Yes the apartment was rented from his family but the board and the supervisors knew. He has a boss as well and everything he did had to go through his boss. The board has to sign off on everything he does so they are blaming him now when they knew all along,” the managers said.

“When he used the corporate credit card, a lot of it was for travel for training purposes in an effort to save the board money. Every penny he spent was for the staff and the benefit of the board. The new man, Gregory Moss, did not even have the decency to speak with Mr Cargill and tell him they was putting him out. He sent a text. As far as the letter that appeared in the press only four people had access to it – Mr Cargill,  the Chairman, the executive secretary and Shane Gibson. Mr Gibson says he did not know who was doing it, but someone is lying. The truth will come out.”

The board of directors at NIB is seeking to terminate Mr Cargill for allegedly “abusing” millions of dollars of public funds.

In a letter to Minister Shane Gisbon, who is responsible for NIB, NIB Chairman Gregory Moss accused Mr Cargill of conflict of interest and abuse of millions of dollars of NIB funds.

The Board is accusing Mr Cargill of being in conflict because he rented an apartment from his brother, Godwin Cargill, they also accused Mr Cargill of spending $240,000 on NIB’s credit card within a period of three years.