Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds yes­ter­day gave a com­mit­ment to pay the em­ploy­ees of the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) their back­pay.

He said the mat­ter was now in the hands of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (COP) since man­age­ment of PTSC had made an er­ror with back­pay cal­cu­la­tions, which was now be­ing ad­dressed.

Last Fri­day, PTSC em­ploy­ees up­staged a slew of gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, in­clud­ing Hinds, who had gath­ered to launch the gov­ern­ment's WiFi on PTSC's bus ser­vice at the City Gate hub, Port-of-Spain, de­mand­ing that they be paid monies owed to them.

Hinds said hav­ing met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union fol­low­ing the protest, all mat­ters were raised and ad­dressed by him.

"As far I am aware we all left there sat­is­fied with the dis­cus­sions that we shared."

On that ba­sis, Hinds said he could not un­der­stand why the me­dia were now pos­ing ques­tions to him with re­gards to when the em­ploy­ees would re­ceive their back­pay.

"In any event, the is­sue of back­pay for PTSC work­ers has gone be­fore the CPO. Be­cause the man­age­ment of PTSC would be able to truth­ful­ly say there were some is­sues around the cal­cu­la­tion of the amount of the back­pay, and as well, is­sues around who have al­ready been paid their back­pay."

Hinds said those mat­ters were now be­ing sort­ed out. Yes­ter­day, PSA's branch chair­man Dar­ryl Lamy said 300 of PTSC's work­ers were owed $34 mil­lion.

Lamy said if the em­ploy­ees were not paid soon, they would seek ad­vice from PSA's pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke who will de­cide their next course of ac­tion.