GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

A grow­ing gov­er­nance con­tro­ver­sy at Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) has placed the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned com­pa­ny un­der in­tense scruti­ny, over­shad­ow­ing its strongest fi­nan­cial per­for­mance in 17 years.

While the com­pa­ny re­port­ed prof­it af­ter tax of TT$214 mil­lion for the year end­ed March 31, 2026, more than dou­ble the pre­vi­ous year’s re­sult, the fi­nan­cial turn­around has done lit­tle to quell con­cerns about man­age­ment prac­tices and over­sight.

The re­sults have been ac­com­pa­nied by board­room tur­moil and re­newed ques­tions over cor­po­rate gov­er­nance.

Against that back­drop, Joanne Ogeer, the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU), which rep­re­sents TSTT work­ers has launched a blis­ter­ing cri­tique of what she de­scribes as a per­sis­tent ex­ec­u­tive re­volv­ing door and unchecked man­age­r­i­al ex­pan­sion.

The union is de­mand­ing trans­paren­cy on whether mass re­trench­ments gen­uine­ly im­proved op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy or mere­ly fund­ed a grow­ing lay­er of top-tier bu­reau­cra­cy.

“The more im­por­tant is­sue is not mere­ly the num­ber, but the fre­quen­cy and scale of changes at the high­est lev­els of TSTT,” Ogeer told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

With­in less than three years, four peo­ple have oc­cu­pied the of­fice of TSTT CEO:

* Lisa Agard was dis­missed in No­vem­ber 2023;

* Kent West­ern was ap­point­ed act­ing CEO in No­vem­ber 2023 and sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed as CEO ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 1, 2024;

* Keino Cox was ap­point­ed act­ing CEO in Ju­ly 2025 fol­low­ing West­ern’s res­ig­na­tion from the post in Ju­ly last year;

* Reza Ho­sein was ap­point­ed act­ing CEO ef­fec­tive Au­gust 18, 2026 fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of Cox’s act­ing tenure.

The lead­er­ship volatil­i­ty ex­tends be­yond the CEO.

Lau­ren San­di­ford was ap­point­ed act­ing cor­po­rate sec­re­tary in Oc­to­ber 2025, re­plac­ing Gayle Al­lick-Solomon, who was ap­point­ed TSTT’s ex­ec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent, le­gal and cor­po­rate sec­re­tary, fol­low­ing the re­tire­ment of Charles Carter on Ju­ly 1, 2018.

In Jan­u­ary 2026, Robert Pankar, the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial con­troller was ap­point­ed act­ing chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer.

He re­placed Ger­ard Coop­er, who had served as act­ing CFO since Jan­u­ary 26, 2024.

Coop­er pre­vi­ous­ly served as TSTT’s CFO from Au­gust 2012 to Feb­ru­ary 2019, be­fore be­ing ap­point­ed gen­er­al man­ag­er of op­er­a­tions and ad­min­is­tra­tion.

His reap­point­ment as act­ing CFO in 2024 fol­lowed the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate the con­tract of then CFO Shi­va Ram­nar­ine with im­me­di­ate ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 5.

Ram­nar­ine had been ap­point­ed CFO on Oc­to­ber 1, 2019.

Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, in Oc­to­ber 2025 Ogeer not­ed that TSTT im­ple­ment­ed an ex­ten­sive re­align­ment of its ex­ec­u­tive struc­ture.

She stat­ed pub­lic re­ports iden­ti­fied ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten po­si­tions with­in the new ex­ec­u­tive frame­work, in­clud­ing chief in­for­ma­tion and cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty, chief da­ta and en­ter­prise port­fo­lio of­fi­cer, vice-pres­i­dent spe­cial projects, vice-pres­i­dent dig­i­tal/prod­uct de­vel­op­ment and in­no­va­tion, vice-pres­i­dent cor­po­rate ser­vices, chief mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer, chief le­gal of­fi­cer, chief busi­ness sales and vice pres­i­dent tech­nol­o­gy, among oth­ers.

Stat­ing that while the union would not “ir­re­spon­si­bly put a fig­ure on every man­age­r­i­al trans­fer, act­ing ap­point­ment or re­as­sign­ment with­out TSTT re­leas­ing its com­plete or­gan­i­sa­tion­al charts,” the pub­lic record es­tab­lish­es mul­ti­ple CEO, CFO, cor­po­rate-sec­re­tar­i­al and ex­ec­u­tive-struc­ture changes over on­ly three years, adding that the union wants the com­pa­ny to dis­close its or­gan­i­sa­tion­al charts for 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, show­ing every ex­ec­u­tive and man­age­r­i­al po­si­tion cre­at­ed, abol­ished, re­named or re­clas­si­fied and the as­so­ci­at­ed an­nu­al em­ploy­ment cost.

Ogeer said the union is de­mand­ing that TSTT dis­close its or­gan­i­sa­tion­al charts from 2022 to 2026 to ver­i­fy whether its man­age­ment ex­pens­es have out­paced sav­ings from op­er­a­tional re­dun­dan­cies.

“A ques­tion may beg, does the union be­lieve this top-heavy ex­ec­u­tive frame­work is dri­ving up op­er­a­tional over­heads at the ex­pense of bar­gain­ing-unit staff?

“That is pre­cise­ly what the union wants in­de­pen­dent­ly ex­am­ined. Our con­cern is the con­tra­dic­tion as work­ers were re­peat­ed­ly told that re­struc­tur­ing and re­trench­ment were nec­es­sary be­cause TSTT had to re­duce its op­er­at­ing ex­pen­di­ture and be­come lean­er. Hun­dreds of work­ers were dis­placed. Yet af­ter re­duc­ing the bar­gain­ing-unit work­force, the or­gan­i­sa­tion ap­pears to have re­peat­ed­ly re­designed and ex­pand­ed por­tions of the se­nior-man­age­ment struc­ture. TSTT has con­sis­tent­ly preached ‘op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy’ at the bot­tom while per­mit­ting ex­ec­u­tive pro­lif­er­a­tion at the top,” Ogeer de­mand­ed.

She fur­ther wants TSTT to dis­close the to­tal an­nu­al em­ploy­ment cost for ex­ec­u­tive and se­nior-man­age­ment per­son­nel, in­clud­ing salaries, al­lowances, bonus­es, ve­hi­cles, trav­el­ling, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ben­e­fits, pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices and oth­er ex­ec­u­tive ben­e­fits and com­pare those costs with 2022, be­fore the last ma­jor re­trench­ment.

“If man­age­ment ex­pen­di­ture has in­creased while bar­gain­ing-unit num­bers have fall­en, then Gov­ern­ment and tax­pay­ers de­serve an ex­pla­na­tion. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant be­cause bar­gain­ing-unit work­ers are the tech­ni­cians re­pair­ing faults, climb­ing poles, main­tain­ing ex­changes, in­stalling fi­bre, serv­ing cus­tomers, op­er­at­ing the net­work and gen­er­at­ing the rev­enue up­on which the Com­pa­ny’s prof­itabil­i­ty ul­ti­mate­ly de­pends,” she added.

De­mands for ‘fit for pur­pose’ au­dit

To eval­u­ate whether re­struc­tur­ing de­liv­ered gen­uine pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, the CWU is al­so de­mand­ing the im­me­di­ate re­lease and in­de­pen­dent au­dit of the com­pa­ny’s un­re­leased “fit for pur­pose” re­port launched by the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment.

The union is call­ing for a thor­ough be­fore-and-af­ter as­sess­ment to eval­u­ate op­er­a­tional ex­pen­di­ture, head­count changes, con­sul­tant fees and con­trac­tor spend­ing.

“Work­ers were re­trenched in the name of ef­fi­cien­cy. If the re­struc­tur­ing was suc­cess­ful, there should be mea­sur­able ev­i­dence ca­pa­ble of demon­strat­ing that suc­cess,” Ogeer ex­plained, re­it­er­at­ing the call for the re­lease the fit for pur­pose find­ings, “sub­ject on­ly to le­git­i­mate com­mer­cial or se­cu­ri­ty redac­tions and to pub­lish the mea­sur­able out­comes of the 2018 and 2022 re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cis­es.”

“Let tax­pay­ers and em­ploy­ees see whether those ex­er­cis­es achieved what they were promised to achieve,” she said.

The CWU al­so wants:

* A prop­er be­fore-and-af­ter as­sess­ment, in­clud­ing to­tal op­er­at­ing ex­pen­di­ture be­fore and af­ter re­trench­ment, sep­a­rat­ing labour costs, man­age­ment costs, con­trac­tor ex­pen­di­ture and con­sul­tan­cy costs;

* Em­ploy­ee head­count by cat­e­go­ry be­fore re­struc­tur­ing and to­day, unionised em­ploy­ees, non-unionised em­ploy­ees, man­agers, ex­ec­u­tives, tem­po­rary em­ploy­ees and con­trac­tors;

* Con­tract­ing-out ex­pen­di­ture be­fore and af­ter re­trench­ment. If em­ploy­ees were re­moved on­ly for their work to be out­sourced at equal or greater cost, that can­not rea­son­ably be char­ac­terised as ef­fi­cien­cy;

*Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in­di­ca­tors, in­clud­ing faults re­paired per tech­ni­cian, in­stal­la­tion times, cus­tomer wait­ing pe­ri­ods, mean time to re­pair, net­work out­ages and ser­vice-restora­tion times;

*Cus­tomer-ser­vice in­di­ca­tors, in­clud­ing com­plaints, churn, ser­vice re­li­a­bil­i­ty and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion mea­sure­ments;

*Rev­enue and prof­itabil­i­ty trends, iden­ti­fy­ing specif­i­cal­ly what por­tion of the turn­around re­sult­ed from gen­uine op­er­a­tional pro­duc­tiv­i­ty as op­posed to re­duced pay­roll, va­can­cies, ac­count­ing ad­just­ments, pen­sion-re­lat­ed ben­e­fits, as­set dis­pos­als or oth­er ex­tra­or­di­nary items;

* Cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture be­fore and af­ter re­struc­tur­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­pen­di­ture on net­work mod­erni­sa­tion, fi­bre, mo­bile in­fra­struc­ture, out­side plant, ex­changes, pow­er sys­tems and cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty;

* Over­time and act­ing costs fol­low­ing re­trench­ment. Re­mov­ing em­ploy­ees and then re­quir­ing re­main­ing work­ers to con­tin­u­ous­ly per­form ad­di­tion­al du­ties may re­duce head­count with­out im­prov­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty; and

* Loss of in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge and tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty, in­clud­ing whether po­si­tions abol­ished in the re­struc­tur­ing sub­se­quent­ly had to be recre­at­ed, con­tract­ed out or per­formed by con­sul­tants.

A five-point plan for sus­tain­abil­i­ty

Rather than op­pos­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al change, the CWU has sub­mit­ted a three-year strate­gic roadmap to the Gov­ern­ment aimed at se­cur­ing TSTT’s long-term com­mer­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

The frame­work pri­ori­tis­es lead­er­ship sta­bil­i­ty, gov­er­nance trans­paren­cy and an ag­gres­sive, ring-fenced cap­i­tal pro­gramme ded­i­cat­ed to fi­bre de­ploy­ment, mo­bile ca­pac­i­ty, out­side plant mod­erni­sa­tion, and pow­er re­dun­dan­cy.

“The CWU does not ad­vo­cate dis­man­tling TSTT. We ad­vo­cate re­build­ing it as a strong, prof­itable, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ad­vanced na­tion­al telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny.

“TSTT can­not con­tin­ue with a re­volv­ing door at the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el. Es­tab­lish a com­pe­tent lead­er­ship team, clear­ly de­fined strate­gic ob­jec­tives and mea­sur­able per­for­mance tar­gets. Ex­ec­u­tive ap­point­ments must be based on ca­pa­bil­i­ty and ne­ces­si­ty rather than con­tin­u­al­ly cre­at­ing ad­di­tion­al lay­ers of bu­reau­cra­cy,” Ogeer ex­plained.

There is al­so the call to es­tab­lish a pro­tect­ed three-year cap­i­tal pro­gramme cov­er­ing fi­bre ex­pan­sion, mo­bile ca­pac­i­ty, out­side-plant mod­erni­sa­tion, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, pow­er in­fra­struc­ture, re­dun­dan­cy and re­place­ment of ob­so­lete equip­ment and a fixed per­cent­age of an­nu­al op­er­at­ing cash flow or prof­its should be ear­marked for net­work rein­vest­ment.

Fur­ther, Ogeer sug­gest­ed a na­tion­al skills au­dit of TSTT be un­der­tak­en aimed at re­train­ing and up­skilling ex­ist­ing work­ers in fi­bre tech­nol­o­gy, cloud ser­vices, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, AI, da­ta ser­vices, IoT and emerg­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies.

“The tran­si­tion from tel­co to tech­co must not mean re­plac­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions work­ers; it should mean trans­form­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions work­ers in­to the work­force re­quired for the new com­pa­ny.

“It al­so means keep­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing cur­rent. You can­not ask em­ploy­ees to em­brace tech­no­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion while their salaries re­main an­chored sev­er­al years in the past,” Ogeer added.

Main­tain­ing that the CWU’s po­si­tion is not an­ti-man­age­ment, an­ti-in­vest­ment or an­ti-change, Ogeer said the union has re­peat­ed­ly demon­strat­ed it wants TSTT to suc­ceed.

How­ev­er, she stressed that work­ers can­not con­tin­u­al­ly be pre­sent­ed as an op­er­a­tional cost to be elim­i­nat­ed while every oth­er cat­e­go­ry of ex­pen­di­ture es­capes equiv­a­lent scruti­ny.

“The peo­ple who built the net­work, main­tained it through dif­fi­cult pe­ri­ods and con­tributed to pro­duc­ing the com­pa­ny’s strongest prof­it in 17 years de­serve to be re­gard­ed not mere­ly as a cost on a bal­ance sheet, but as part­ners in TSTT’s fu­ture,”

No re­sponse from min­is­ter

Guardian Me­dia, on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, reached out to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath but calls and ques­tions sent via What­sApp re­mained unan­swered.

The ques­tions in­clud­ed:

1) Can you please share what are fu­ture the plans for TSTT?

2) Are there plans to re­struc­ture the or­gan­i­sa­tion fur­ther?

3) What is gov­ern­ment fo­cus­ing on to make TSTT a vi­able or­gan­i­sa­tion?

4) Give an up­date on the long await­ed fit for pur­pose au­dit re­port.