Joanne Ogeer

CWU Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al

Should ac­count­abil­i­ty be se­lec­tive? In the case of Am­plia Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the ques­tion must not just scratch the sur­face but must be thor­ough­ly an­swered. Via TTT on­line, I have heard the re­cent pro­nounce­ments by Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath re­gard­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the ac­qui­si­tion of Am­plia Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and in­stant­ly this may sound re­as­sur­ing on the sur­face.

How­ev­er, the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly work­ers, the CWU and tax­pay­ers, must ask a far more fun­da­men­tal ques­tion or ques­tions. With­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion, the first ques­tion is where was this pas­sion for ac­count­abil­i­ty when it mat­tered most? For years, when asked by the CWU, un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, the ac­qui­si­tion of Am­plia ex­ist­ed be­hind a veil of si­lence, no clear dis­clo­sures or re­fusal to dis­close, no trans­par­ent val­u­a­tion and no hon­est ac­count­ing to the tax­pay­ers whose mon­ey ul­ti­mate­ly un­der­writes state en­ter­pris­es like the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed.

The unan­swered ques­tions that nev­er went away for years: the union has con­sis­tent­ly raised crit­i­cal, le­git­i­mate con­cerns, and to date, they still do not make fi­nan­cial sense. Now we are hear­ing of a “bleed” on TSTT. This is not new! Con­cern­ing the pur­chase …Why Am­plia Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and what are the ac­tu­al prof­its be­ing re­turned to the par­ent com­pa­ny, TSTT? What is the fi­nan­cial val­ue be­ing de­rived by the State from this in­vest­ment?

These are not po­lit­i­cal ques­tions or an at­tack on the gov­ern­ment, but are le­git­i­mate ques­tions on be­half of tax­pay­ers who must shoul­der this bur­den. Yet, every at­tempt to in­ter­ro­gate these mat­ters was met with re­sis­tance, dis­com­fort and, in some in­stances, out­right dis­re­gard by the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion and the ech­e­lons of TSTT man­age­ment.

Even more trou­bling is the is­sue of job du­pli­ca­tion at Am­plia and dis­place­ment at TSTT. Work­ers have long ob­served that roles ex­ist­ing with­in TSTT ap­pear repli­cat­ed with­in Am­plia, with in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge and ca­pac­i­ty built at TSTT be­ing side­lined. This is not new. The CWU has chal­lenged the com­pa­ny from its ac­qui­si­tion to date on same. Work­ers have been left ques­tion­ing whether this struc­ture serves ef­fi­cien­cy or some­thing else en­tire­ly. Still, there was the deaf­en­ing si­lence.

A grave and sta­ple con­cern of the CWU, which we re­gard as a fun­da­men­tal IR breach and pos­es a chal­lenge, we now ask: If Am­plia is in­deed a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of TSTT, then why has the Recog­nised Ma­jor­i­ty Union (RMU) of TSTT, be­ing the CWU, been in­her­ent­ly blocked from se­cur­ing recog­ni­tion for Am­plia work­ers? This is not a mi­nor pro­ce­dur­al is­sue. This goes to the heart of work­ers’ con­sti­tu­tion­al and statu­to­ry rights un­der the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions frame­work of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

You can­not claim cor­po­rate uni­ty for fi­nan­cial ben­e­fit, and then de­ny that same en­ti­ty uni­ty when it comes to work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion. That is not gov­er­nance but mere con­ve­nience. We have seen and ex­pe­ri­enced a cul­ture of se­cre­cy un­der suc­ces­sive lead­er­ship at TSTT. Any ques­tion touch­ing Am­plia was treat­ed as though it crossed an in­vis­i­ble line, with re­quests for clar­i­ty be­ing frowned up­on and le­git­i­mate in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­cerns dis­missed.

Tire­less­ly, when called up­on for trans­paren­cy, it was ex­pe­di­tious­ly re­placed with opac­i­ty. This cul­ti­vat­ed a cul­ture where “if it in­volves Am­plia, don’t ask.” How­ev­er, the burn­ing is­sue has not end­ed and is now resur­fac­ing with some of the same ques­tions be­ing asked by Min­is­ter Padarath.

This cul­ture must end and work­ers must not be­come ca­su­al­ties of po­lit­i­cal the­atrics.

While the union wel­comes any gen­uine in­ves­ti­ga­tion, we is­sue a clear warn­ing and pel­lu­cid­ly state that work­ers must not be­come “col­lat­er­al dam­age” at the end of any in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the op­er­a­tions of Am­plia Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

The CWU is hope­ful that this in­ves­ti­ga­tion is not “po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed”, or pro­duces con­clu­sions with­out sub­stance. Should this be the case, then the fall­out will not be borne by pol­i­cy­mak­ers but by work­ers and their fam­i­lies. The job se­cu­ri­ty of Am­plia em­ploy­ees must be non-ne­go­tiable. There­fore, the CWU’s po­si­tion is that we sup­port an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the sub­sidiary, but wish to state that this should not be an­oth­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion that has not pro­duced re­sults, akin to those of the cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty in­cur­sion, fit for pur­pose and the foren­sic au­dit in­to TSTT (all of which are still out­stand­ing from the past and present ad­min­is­tra­tion).

The union and the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go need an­swers and these should be asked and re­port­ed on with full trans­paren­cy, cit­ing every dol­lar spent, in­clud­ing all de­ci­sions made sur­round­ing this ac­qui­si­tion, re­turns earned and the val­ue of main­tain­ing such a “fi­nan­cial weight” on the par­ent com­pa­ny. Tax­pay­ers de­serve noth­ing less, and it is time to get the an­swers to the ques­tions that have been asked and ig­nored for years!

CWU al­so turns its at­ten­tion to the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions frame­work and to the work­ers at Am­plia. They must en­joy the same rights to rep­re­sen­ta­tion as those with­in TSTT, it be­ing a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary.

Unions pro­tect jobs; no in­ves­ti­ga­tion, no mat­ter how jus­ti­fied, should desta­bilise the liveli­hoods of work­ers who didn’t have a role in ex­ec­u­tive de­ci­sions. Ac­count­abil­i­ty can­not be­gin on­ly when it is po­lit­i­cal­ly con­ve­nient. Trans­paren­cy can­not or seem to be se­lec­tive­ly ap­plied. If this na­tion is se­ri­ous about gov­er­nance, then the Am­plia mat­ter must be pur­sued ful­ly, fair­ly and fear­less­ly from ac­qui­si­tion to the present day.

And above all, its truth must not on­ly be un­cov­ered, it must be told!

The Price of Free­dom is eter­nal Vig­i­lance!