CenITex chief operating officer Thana Velummylum had previously held a contract worth $215,620 for five and a half months' work with the Victorian IT shared services agency, government contract documents have revealed.
The agency came under fire last week from the state opposition after it was revealed that Velummylum had received $493,680 for his role for a contract from 1 September last year to 31 August this year. In addition, CenITex's former CIO Bruce Carlos, whose position has now been dissolved, had held a contract that saw him pick up $396,000 for a year's work.
The additional $215,620 contract means that Velummlylum has received over $700k from the Victorian Government in contracted pay since early 2008.
Victoria's Shadow Finance Minister Gordon Rich-Phillips has questioned why CenITex had hired contractors to fill top positions instead of sourcing permanent employees, and has described the CenITex contractors as being probably the highest paid public servants in Victoria.
At the time Velummylum's first contract was signed, the Department of Treasury and Finance had just decided to converge its Information and Technology Services group and Shared Services Centre into the one organisation — CenITex.
The contract, entitled "Implementation of IT Service Delivery Model" procured a project manager to assist with the implementation of the service model that the department had decided on and was signed with a company of which Velummylum is a director, called Pharma Insight.
The first contract was signed under the company's Corporate Aspirin trading name, while the chief of operations role was signed under the company's Pharma Insight trading name. The Corporate Aspirin contract duration was from 13 March to 31 August 2008. The chief of operations contract started the next day on 1 September.
For the first contract, the payment was around $1253 a day for 172 days. During the second contract, it came to around $1352 per day for the year — which appeared to imply a pay increase of around eight per cent.
CenITex and state Finance Minister Tim Holding's office have not responded to any of ZDNet.com.au's requests for comment on the executive payment issue.
