Otto Sam transferred to the National Emergency Management Office (NEMO)

Public servant and career educator Otto Sam, who has been transferred, effective Monday, August 30, to the National Emergency Management Office (NEMO), believes that Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves will soon be transferred, too.{{more}}

“I think that the people would transfer the Prime Minister back to private office – I’ll still be working with government – and he to his residence in Gorse,” Sam told SEARCHLIGHT on Wednesday.

The Chief Personnel Officer on Tuesday, August 17, informed Sam, who was up to that time Headteacher of the South Rivers Methodist School, that he is to report to NEMO next Monday, his second transfer in one year.

Sam, who has been a teacher for 30 years, was transferred from the Lowmans Windward Anglican School to the South Rivers Methodist School last September.

He told SEARCHLIGHT on Wednesday that he believes that Gonsalves orchestrated his transfer.

“It is just a matter of the Chief Personnel Officer doing the paperwork,” Sam said.

“I think it is a continuing act of spite [for] those people who are of any different view from the official view in this country – the Prime Minister mainly,” Sam said.

Sam has publicly criticised the Unity Labour Party (ULP) government and past New Democratic Party (NDP) administrations.

“I have not always been in line with official view and then I was part of the teachers’ struggle in a way in 2008, which the government did not like,” he said, of his interactions with Gonsalves’ government.

He was referring to the Reclassification exercise, in which teachers failed to secure a 17 per cent increase in salary.

Gonsalves, who is also Minister of Finance, also rejected the teachers’ offers of 13 per cent and 10 per cent, instead giving seven percent, which, he argued, was better than the ten per cent.

“It wasn’t just that. It was the arrogance and the contempt with which he treated people,” Sam said of Gonsalves.

Sam had also joined in the call for a postponement of last November’s referendum on constitutional reform, which was defeated, with 43.13% of voters opting for the new charter and 55.64% voting against it.

He is being transferred to NEMO “until further notice”, but Sam said the placement will only last as long as the current ULP administration.

General elections are constitutionally due by next March, 2011, and Sam, a member of the ULP, said he will be supporting Addison Bash Thomas, the NDP’s candidate for South Central Windward.

“It is impossible to be supporting this kind of leadership that is totally disrespectful to citizens. So I am going to support the nation. And I am really not politically active,” Sam told SEARCHLIGHT.

He said the electorate would not give a third consecutive term to Gonsalves and his ULP, which first came to office in 2001.

“I think that the direction of the country, the whole level of fear in the country, the whole lack of leadership, the whole intimidation; I think that God would have a change in this nation … I think the people are seeing it,” he told SEARCHLIGHT.

Sam’s transfer is the latest in an ongoing saga that reportedly took a new twist when Gonsalves made an unannounced visit to the South Rivers Methodist School on March 21, 2010.

SEARCHLIGHT understands that during that visit, Gonsalves did not first report to the Headteacher’s office, which is the policy of the Ministry of Education for all visitors to academic institutions.

Sam wrote to the Prime Minister pointing out the alleged flouting of the Ministry’s directive. The Chief Education Officer, it is said, then asked Sam to apologise to the Prime Minister, which Sam refused to do.

During his four year stint as head of the Lowmans Windward Anglican School, Common Entrance Examination passes increased from an average of 29 per cent to 70 per cent, Sam said.

He said “absolutely nothing is clear” about what he is to do at NEMO, adding that he has no training in emergency management.

Sam, however, said that he will report to the NEMO on Monday.

“At the end of the day, I don’t worry about anything, because God is in control, and I expect it to be sorted out – to sort itself out. I will report to work,” he said.

SEARCHLIGHT was unsuccessful in attempts to reach Gonsalves, who was in his weekly Cabinet meeting up to press time on Wednesday. (KXC)