By Special Correspondent.
As scheduled and as
disclosed in this forum earlier, the Annual General Body Meeting of Gulf Goans (Hotel
Goan Heritage) started and ended in a chaotic situation with the election of
three Board members turning into a farce.
The chairman Justine Fernandes was forced to get down from the chair by
the shareholders and hence the chair was handed over to Alex Wilson Coelho the
so called vice chairman. It was a shame for the chairman to disgracefully leave
his chair. When this was the case, Justine Fernandes had no moral right to continue
as a chairman and play around with shareholders
assets. The acting chairman Coelho tried to act like a Hitler as if the company
is his father’s property. So much so,
one of his colleagues in the board getting annoyed on him loudly shouted at
Coelho saying “SHUT UP-SHUT UP”. When things
were going out of hand for the board when it was exposed of its misdeeds, the
share holders demanded from the board to resign and get out.
The meet started with
the prayer by Coelho but it was not a proper prayer, it was a politically
motivated prayer like a Tiatrist giving a “Zupatti” to his opponent. Such
prayer will only bring a curse on the hotel and not a blessing. The prayer of an unblessed person who duped
Kuwait Goans of their money will never be fruitful.
The acting chairman
disclosed that the meeting will discuss all the 12 points in the Agenda but the meeting took up only one point and that
was of Statement of Account which itself was incomplete while the remaining
points remained undiscussed. This proves that this meet was nothing but a big
joke.
It was first time in
the history of this company that the board members were disgraced openly not only by
the share holders but more than that by themselves washing their dirtry linen publicly even
accusing one director of using Hotel’s property for his personal use and
unfortunately the accused director failed to defend himself. At one particular moment, 4 directors were
accused by the acting chairman of barging into the office of chairman demanding
his resignation prematurely and yet again this accusation went unchallenged.
The chair disclosed that
this time the profit has gown down but failed to cite the proper reason which according
to this writer is due to shutting of hotel for a certain period of course
unnecessarily thereby cheating the shareholders of worthy dividends. The
dividends given this time was only 2.5 and incidentally earlier too was the
same as per the available information. Now
the question arises, are things moving in right direction in the company
managed by the board of directors? Is this board under the ageing and incompetent
chairman Justin Fernandes is competent enough to run the affairs of the Hotel
properly? What is the capacity, qualification and contribution of Justin
Fernandes and other directors to hold their seats in the board? What was their
contribution in the promotion of Hotel Goan Heritage? Are they there for
prestige issue or for productive
purpose? The shareholders want to know the answer from each and every director
to decide on the future course.
As per the beans
spilled out during the course of meeting, almost for the last two years the
company is running without the Chief Accountant and in this case who is
controlling the finance of the company? Is it a Cashier or a Waiter or a Buttler?
In this case it is bound to be a mess in the company for which every
board member must be held responsible and every
shareholder must be held accountable for electing the incompetent directors.
How stupid the
outstation shareholders were proved thru the proxy forms they sent to idiots to elect
idiots only. Were the proxy shareholders
aware that their proxy forms would be utilized for the right candidates or they
will be used by the receiver for his personal victory by ignoring the
shareholders interest? Every shareholder’s
interest is better dividend. The major
shareholders stationed abroad are guilty
of allowing their proxy forms to be misused by the person whom they relied in
Goa. If these proxy votes were to utilize properly for the productive candidates, the meetting
would not have been started and ended in a sour note. For this reason the blame
should be on the shoulders of the proxy shareholders. Otherwise, for the next AGM
the major proxy shareholders should present themselves and have a feel of their investment. In view of this, I salute the shareholders
present for this AGM and voted for the right candidates for the betterment of
the hotel
48 Hours before the
election all the proxy forms were scrutinized and checked by the concerned
parties along with the legal authority and they found everything in order. However, 12 hours before the election, one party
of Coelho found some proxy forms not properly filled and thus these forms were
disqualified. This was disclosed just
before the election making other party to believe it was nothing but a trick to
reduce the votes of Coelho’s opponents. Naturally the votes of Coelho faction
was increased because the other side votes were decreased. But what was the legal authority of Coelho
faction to disqualify the proxy forms and that too when everything was found to
be in order 48 hours before the election?
This has to be contested by the opponents of Coelho faction thru legal
process, if necessary.
In the ensuing election
as per the witnesses Coelho put a bunch
of proxy forms in the ballot box much after the end of the meeting which is
illegal. Jerry Fernandes and Filipe Ferdinand were declared as clear winners by
defeating their rivals Verlekar and Wilson Rodrigues while Felix Ferrao was
defeated by Lobo of Coelho faction.
