Banks Holdings Limited of Barbados and 350 petitioners who work for Citrus Products of Belize Limited (CPBL) have been unsuccessful in their attempts this week to get the Citrus Growers Association (CGA) to stand down on its intent to fire Henry Canton, the ex-PUP politician who has been running the CPBL for over 7 years, with immediate effect, via an extra-ordinary general meeting at the association’s Stann Creek Valley office on Friday, December 17.
Banks, minority shareholder, holds a 46.8% interest in CPBL; CGA, majority shareholder, holds a 51% stake. CGA has asserted that it has enough directorships to remove Canton from his post of Chief Executive Officer at the meeting it has requisitioned for tomorrow.
Amandala understands from Denzil Jenkins, chairman of CGA’s subsidiary, Belize Citrus Growers Association Investment Company Limited (BCGAICL), which holds shares for CGA in CPBL, that Supreme Court Justice Minett Hafiz this afternoon denied a request from Banks Holdings, made through its local attorney Derek Courtenay, to stop tomorrow’s meeting from proceeding.
Our newspaper is also informed by a CPBL employee that Prime Minister Dean Barrow has responded to the petition of workers, but has pledged to visit the factory in January 2011.
Another CPBL worker who Amandala spoke with on condition of anonymity said the petition, with 350 signatures, was sent to Prime Minister Barrow on Monday, in the hope that he would be “the voice of reason.” They have gone to the PM, he said, because they want to avoid physical conflict.
Without intervention by the Prime Minister and without a court injunction, Friday’s meeting called by CGA to depose Canton is still on.
There is one alteration to the planned events, however: Henry Anderson, the current CEO of CGA, will not be appointed to serve as interim CEO of CPBL, as had been stated in the notice issued earlier this month.
Jenkins said that the decision not to appoint Anderson in the interim but to have current senior staff run CPBL—as would be the case if the CEO were to go on leave or fall ill—was made on the advice of their lawyer, Eamon Courtenay. Anderson has written declining the offer as well, Jenkins told us.
The post of CEO for CPBL, he said, will be advertised and the 3-man committee will proceed to appoint a CEO in the near future.