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| A cross section of the participants attending the historic workshop. |
CHARLESTOWN NEVIS (October 11, 2006) -- The Ministry of Finance in the Nevis Island Administration (NIA) made history Wednesday when it conducted the first ever workshop on corporate governance for members of the statutory boards in Nevis at the Mount Nevis Hotel.
The one day workshop was facilitated by financial consultant His Excellency Mr Wendell Lawrence of Lawrence Consulting Group under the theme "The Role of a Director" . The workshop was attended by board chairpersons and members of the Nevis Tourism Authority, Nevis Air and Sea Ports Authority, the Nevis Electricity Company and the Nevis Housing and Lands Corperation.
During the brief opening ceremony, Ms Hazel Brandy Budget Director in the NIA said that the workshop was timely and it demonstrated that the new Administration - now three months old - was serious about transparency and accountability at all levels of government.
"This workshop was organised therefore, to sensitise board members on the importance of corporate governance in the execution of your duties. It was Bill Witterhall who commented that good governance goes beyond common sense. It is the key part of a contract that underpins economic growth in a massive economy and puts public faith in that system&
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| Ms Hazel Brandy Budget Director |
"It is our hope that this workshop would seek to address the parameters of good governance and corporate responsibility in helping to ensure the proper functioning of these parastatals. We must bear in mind that the central corporate governing principals of transparency and accountability are crucial to the integrity of our organisation," she said.
Ms. Brandy reminded the participants of the flood of recent corporate failures including the Enron collapse in the United States which had caused a serious breakdown in truthful accounting and had undermined the public's faith in financial reporting and as a result had presented many challenges in corporate leadership and the integrity of corporation and organisations all over the world.
She urged participants to be attentive and receptive of the guidelines presented to them in an effort to develop and enhance proper business ethics which would improve their overall performance.
Mr. Lawrence while he gave a brief overview of the workshop congratulated the NIA for seeing the benefits of ensuring that their board of directors began on a good footing, citing that in a context of Nevis and by extension the Caribbean, much of the resources of government are commanded by public corperations, public companies and other public entities.
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| His Excellency Mr Wendell Lawrence
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He said it would be futile to attempt to meaningfully execute government policy without understanding what happens in those entities; without ensuring that the corporate governance climate was in order in order to facilitate effective decision making.
Mr Lawrence referred to the workshop as being very useful and noted that in recent times one of the areas of corporate governance had been board of directors' qualifications.
"I have always argued in the context of small islands you are not going to find people with a whole range of qualifications that many institutions are interested on but you have to work with what you have and you have to ensure that people are given the adequate opportunity to be trained to understand the issues.
"I am very confident in the ability of the people of Nevis, the ability of the people of the Caribbean from all walks of life to make a meaningful contribution to the board provided that they dedicate the time and effort to the process and provided they have certain important characteristics. The long qualifications are nice and good but perhaps the mostly important attribute of any board membership has to be integrity, honesty, the willingness to work hard and the willingness to be sincere in all that you do," he said.
~~Adz:Right~~Mr Lawrence was of the view that technical attributes was something that could be acquired over time and a workshop of that nature would serve as one of the important elements of ensuring that the participants acquires some of the technical attributes.
According to Mr Lawrence, other matters for discussion on the workshop's agenda were strategic, risk and change management.
