I would be extremely grateful if you could kindly publish my letter in the next issue of The Anguillian or at your earliest convenience thereafter please.

I would like through this medium to share my thoughts on some of the comments that I have been hearing as the election campaigning heats up and the candidates present their plans (for what some of them are worth) to the people of Anguilla.

More specifically I would like to speak to some persons’ charges that Mr Sutcliffe Hodge was an insensitive and inconsiderate (my words) general manager of Cable & Wireless who did not look out for the interest of his people. Though I may not be better placed than anyone else to comment on this, I too have an opinion and it seemingly is diametrically opposed to that of some of my fellow Anguillians.

In listening to the comments, I am at a loss as to what the charges being leveled against him really are and where they are coming from. I have concluded, though, that the source may give some insight into the reason certain members of the public may be propagating these sentiments and may be borne from personal grouses and not objective observation.

That Mr Hodge encouraged C&W staff to constantly re-tool themselves, further their education and take advantage of any training opportunities, including online training, could not possibly be seen as a bad thing. Is it that we will never out grow the mentality that being Anguillian is all the qualification an individual will ever need to hold jobs in Anguilla and anyone who asks us to do more is not being nationalistic?

As far as I am aware, Cable & Wireless across the Caribbean went through several iterations of staff reductions over the past 10 years and I am fairly certain that Mr Hodge was doing what every other general managers in C&W in the Caribbean did as was directed by their bosses…Shooting the messenger is never a brilliant move and is a sign of short-sightedness. Further, I would like to suggest that any redundancies would have been made with-in the parameters of the labour laws of Anguilla. If we have an issue with how C&W’s staff was separated from the company we may need to look within ourselves as a society and at our laws. How about employee unions which fight for the rights of the employee? How about labour laws that are fairer, if indeed we think the ones that we have are not adequate?

Also, when looking at the number of staff separated from C&W over the years of Mr Hodge’s stewardship, and laying blame at his feet, would it not be a good thing to look at the whole picture? The Regional Contact Centre came to Anguilla at a time when other C&W branches were loosing staff without any hope of hiring in other areas. Under Mr Hodge’s leadership the Contact Centre was built, set-up and hiring in short order and was able to employ many young persons, perhaps even more than had been made redundant or separated from the company.

And finally, what about Brown Hill Communications? I have not confirmed this with anyone from Brown Hill, but I understand that Mr Hodge was critical in wooing Brown Hill to Anguilla even as he was making plans to work in the Windward Islands. Brown Hill Communications has hired many young school leavers over the last few months. When our beloved tourism industry was laying off people and hotels were closed, school leavers had an opportunity find work in a non-tourism based company, which might be a good thing since we have ignored common sense and put all our eggs in one (at best two, tourism and the financial services) very leaky basket here in Anguilla.

Perhaps it would serve us well to try to get the full picture about circumstances and situations before we jump to conclusions and spread rumours – regardless of whether the source seems credible.

Warm regards,

Name Witheld at writer's request

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