What's going on at the Immigrant and Multicultural Services Society is a crying shame. Everyone recognizes the great work this non-profit organization has done to help new immigrants and refugees from other countries settle in Prince George and the region.
Sadly, however, IMSS is going through a rough patch and a five-member group has been given three months to get to the bottom of the problems.
At Saturday's annual general meeting, executive director Baljit Sethi, the longtime face of the group, said she wouldn't wash her dirty laundry at a public meeting.
All she told the meeting was that she was granted a medical leave, stopped into the office to pick up her cheque and found a letter on her desk saying her retirement would begin once her leave ended.
Naturally, she's not too happy about that.
It's only one side of the story, of course, but if it happened that way, she has a right to be angry. As any human resource professional knows, people can't be let go from their job while on medical leave unless the employer wants to be on the losing end of a hefty wrongful dismissal lawsuit.
Based on comments IMSS's board chair Mostafa Mohamed made, both at the meeting and in The Citizen's story last week on the issues at IMSS, the board felt it had to step in to deal with problems around staffing and spending. Normally, the volunteer board members of a non-profit society stick to policy matters, provide oversight and support to just one staff member - the executive director - and leave administration to the person in charge.
The board will only step in when they have lost confidence in their executive director or when that person abruptly leaves their post for any reason (such as a medical issue) and has not left a clear chain of command behind. Neither of those situations happens slowly or without someone ignoring their responsibilities over an extended period of time.
If the IMSS board feel Sethi made mistakes or didn't deal with important matters before her leave began, they are within their legal rights to address those concerns as they see fit. She may be the person that Prince George residents think of when IMSS comes to mind but she answers to the board, not the other way around.
That's about all that's clear from this situation.
Society members had plenty of questions on Saturday but heard few answers since there were no financial statements produced and Sethi wasn't talking. That five-member investigative committee has plenty of work to do and it's clear that everyone, regardless of their feelings towards Sethi or the board, feels the organization's "operational irregularities," whatever they may be, need to be exposed for all to see.
Prince George residents saw a similar movie not that long ago, when Theatre Northwest was torn apart by internal strife between its founders and former artistic director and general manager, Ted Price and Anne Laughlin, and the theatre's volunteer board of directors. Before that situation evolved into to a lawsuit, which was eventually dropped last summer, there were also heated meetings where members of the society were trying to figure out what was going on.
There are obvious similarities what happened at Theatre Northwest and what's going on at IMSS. In both cases, the longtime leaders were approaching the end of their careers and the board of directors wanted to be ready for when that day came, so they started imagining what that future would look like.
The longtime senior employees saw board members come and go over the years, so they are a little hurt when they said "we're still here and we have work to do" and the board's response was "we know we'll be fine without you so when are you leaving?"
That may be a simplistic interpretation of the two cases but it is a glimpse of the very real and ongoing tensions between an executive director (or team effort as it was with Price and Laughlin) and the board of directors of a non-profit. Price, Laughlin and Sethi built their respective groups into the impressive organizations they are and are deserving of the praise they receive for their fine work. The boards, meanwhile, can't help but see the change as not just the sad end of a glorious era but also the opportunity to build on that legacy and go in a different direction.
Neither view is wrong but it's clear how they stand apart at a critical and sensitive juncture in the history of any non-profit group. After all of the debates about money and power, it often boils down to the failure to communicate between a veteran administrator that knows the job inside and out and a board of directors that may not have either the history or knowledge but got involved because they want to do the right thing.
Hopefully, as one IMSS board member said Saturday, "sunshine is the best disinfectant" and IMSS can resolve its internal problems and continue to play its central role for new residents.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
