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The Board of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty has re­ject­ed claims of fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment made by Min­is­ter of Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Van­dana Mo­hit, in­sist­ing it had al­ready tak­en cor­rec­tive ac­tion and that sev­er­al is­sues raised pub­licly could have been re­solved through di­rect di­a­logue.

In a state­ment re­spond­ing to the min­is­ter’s al­le­ga­tions on Tues­day, the board said it act­ed in re­la­tion to the Au­thor­i­ty’s Di­rec­tor/Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, who al­so held the po­si­tion of Head of Op­er­a­tions, and took steps to ad­dress the dual role arrange­ment.

“The Board states cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that the dis­missal of the Di­rec­tor/Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, who al­so served as Head of Op­er­a­tions, was nei­ther a knee-jerk re­ac­tion nor ar­bi­trary. It was a de­ci­sive and care­ful­ly con­sid­ered de­ci­sion tak­en by the Board, in ac­cor­dance with the Au­thor­i­ty’s Dis­ci­pli­nary Pol­i­cy, to dis­miss the said Di­rec­tor/CEO on the grounds of gross mis­con­duct. Specif­i­cal­ly, the Di­rec­tor/CEO was in­volved in a sole­ly op­er­a­tional de­ci­sion to with­hold statu­to­ry pay­ments with­out the knowl­edge of the Board.”