Controversial CenITex executive Thana Velummylum has again entered into a contract with the Victorian shared services agency for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
His newest contract has recently been released on the Victorian tender site. For the two years from 1 August 2009 to 1 August 2011, his company Pharma Insight will receive $900,000: a step down in pay from his last pay packet, but also a longer commitment.
The public eye had already been trained on the executive because of his previous large pay packets. For the year 1 September 2008 to 31 August 2009, Velummylum was paid $493,680 for a year's work as CenITex's chief of operations. Prior to that his company (under a different trading name) held a contract worth $215,620 for five and a half months' work implementing the agency's IT service delivery model.
The amount he earned obtained some scrutiny by Victorian Shadow Information Technology Minister Gordon Rich-Phillips in state budget estimates hearings earlier in the year. Rich-Phillips said that senior positions such as chief of operations shouldn't be filled by very highly paid contractors.
After these events, Velummylum changed his role at CenITex to become the transformation manager for the agency's Efficient Technology Services program, which creates the common ICT services used to supply shared services to agencies' needs.
The dates and amount for the chief operations contract listed in the Victorian tender site also seem to have been altered since June, reducing to $457,765 for the new period of 4 August 2008 to 31 July 2009. The altered dates would mean that his first two contracts overlap by a month.
Taking the altered amounts into account, the new contract will bring Velummylum's payment for services to CenITex to just over $1.5 million.
CenITex had at the time of writing not commented on the appropriateness of the payment or Velummylum's role change.
CenITex advertised recently for a new chief operating officer to fill the position Velummylum left. It also recently signed a deal with BMC software for service management. The value of this four-year contract has now been released as $4,847,204.
CenITex currently provides services to the Victorian Departments of Transport, Planning and Community Development, Premier and Cabinet, Primary Industries, Sustainability and Environment as well as Treasury and Finance. By 2012, it hopes to also supply services to the Departments of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development, Human Services, Justice, Education and Early Childhood Development as well as to VicRoads, the State Revenue Office, the Environmental Protection Authority and Victoria Police.
Being on the in side, let me tell you what really has happened. These people at CenITex have total contempt for the VPS fabric. Due to exposure a few months ago, our little Pete and a member of the Comms team worked together on a strategy to make Thana's title and profile not as high as it seemed before. So with no change is remuneration, they changed the title to "manager of transformation" and deliberately listed him on the bottom end of the team list. This was a deliberate attempt to cover up the exposure from last time. I guess it didn't work. Thana also get's a lot of "freebies" and a lot of perks to make up for a few dollars he thought he would get as a pay increase. His performance is extremely poor, the ETS program has not met 4 out of 5 targets and the tax payer still pays him 500K - this is nothing but fraud. Something is difinitely going on here that we dont know of between our Pete and Thana the last banana. There are VPS guidelines for this level of role to review very carefully and not have contractors at $2000 per day, let alone with a hefty pay check AND with such a poor performer? Thana's COO job may be advertised but it is all part of the plot. Even if a COO if appointed, he will continue to get paid this much money until the powers in the government and or the opposition looks into this mismanagment. This would have to be the biggest public secot fraud in VPS history. This role does not need to be a contractor, it can very easily be a VPS 6 or STS position. Thana is a VPS 5.2 level capable individual, he is not fit to be doing the job he is doing and certainly not worth $500K. He is $110K person as there are a lot of great managers and leaders already in the VPS hungry to perform well and be proud of it. Get rid of this guy, he is bad news for VPS and Victoria. By the way, we still compensate him for his weekly flights to Sydney where he lives with his family and I wouldnt be surprised if he is getting compensated for his Melb accommodation in the city that he stays.
Great job in doscoering this by ZDNET, it is nothing personal, we are all sick of this rort by CenITex.