BWIA: Execs made $7m last year BY JUHEL BROWNE Guardian 05.09.03 BWIA's management, including chief executive officer Conrad Aleong, earned a little more than $7 million in 2002, the airline said last week. BWIA was responding to an article in last Thursday's Business Guardian in which head of Airline Superintendents Association president Theo Oliver said the 2002 employee costs for BWIA's 31 executives amounted to US$70,000 per day or 35 per cent of the total wage bill for that year. The Business Guardian gave BWIA the opportunity to respond to Oliver's statements before the article was published. The airline's spokesman, Clint Williams, opted not to respond. Last Thursday, hours after the newspaper hit the streets, BWIA issued a copy of a letter from Aegis Business Solutions Ltd, the company that processes the salaries and allowances of the airline's executives. The Aegis letter, written to Aleong and dated October 16, 2002 said: "The total executive management payroll including the management supply contract (25 top management) for the year amounted to seven million, one hundred and twenty-two thousand, one hundred and twenty dollars ($7,122,120)." The letter was signed by Aegis managing director Angela Lee Loy. In an interview, Lee Loy confirmed she signed the letter and said "it was a request by Mr Aleong and it was a statement of fact". Lee Loy said she had no idea why Aleong requested the letter, but said he was entitled to do so as one of Aegis'clients. She also said she was unaware of the salaries and allowances of other BWIA employees since Aegis only processes the compensation packages of the airline's management. BWIA also issued a news release which said of the Aegis letter: "Further analysis of the total figure, demonstrates that the salary of the top 25 executives, including the president and chief executive officer of BWIA West Indies Airways and all executives falling under the CA International supply contract, is 2.1 per cent of the total annual salary and wage bill of $344.6 million." The Guardian also obtained a copy of a letter written to Oliver by BWIA acting chief financial officer and vice president Brenda Billy. In her letter, Billy said it was impossible for the BWIA management to have earned more than one third of the airline's wage bill last year. She asked Oliver: "You were, until recently, a member of the management of this airline. How can you even begin to claim that the top 31 persons make, on average, $14,226 per person per day? That means an average salary of some $284,520 monthly per person." Billy noted: "Even if the figure were skewed upward to top executives, the numbers are still impossible. You do the math." Oliver stood by the US$70,000 figure which he said was provided to him by a former BWIA official. BWIA called Oliver's statements and the document which showed the airline's management made an average daily wage of US$70,000 per day "totally false and a gross error". *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: http://www.cso.gov.tt TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************