Sascha Wil­son

In a mid­day protest yes­ter­day Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB) staffers ex­pressed out­rage re­ject­ing a five per cent wage in­crease of­fer by the em­ploy­er. Chant­i­ng "Dook­er­an stop in­ter­fer­ing. We want we mon­ey now," the work­ers protest­ed with plac­ards on Har­ris Prom­e­nade in front of the San Fer­nan­do of­fice. Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion's NIB staff rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Ter­rance Reg­is, said the 600-plus work­ers had been stag­ing pick­et demon­stra­tions at var­i­ous branch­es through­out the coun­try. Join­ing the protest yes­ter­day were work­ers from the Point Fortin and Siparia branch­es.

Reg­is said, "The NIB ne­go­ti­a­tions is just in­jus­tices heap up­on in­jus­tices. Right now we are fac­ing an of­fer of that no­to­ri­ous five per cent in­crease from the man­age­ment and ac­cord­ing to the said man­age­ment, the five per cent has been dic­tat­ed to them by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance (Win­ston Dook­er­an) who is re­spon­si­ble for na­tion­al in­sur­ance. These are the same peo­ple pub­licly say­ing it have no five per cent cap." He said rage was spread­ing through­out the or­gan­i­sa­tion and if the is­sue was not re­solved, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty would def­i­nite­ly be af­fect­ed. He ex­plained, "Peo­ple are not mere­ly up­set by the five per cent but it is be­ing done in an or­gan­i­sa­tion that is cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing giv­ing a 100 per cent in­crease to ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment."

In ad­di­tion, he said, work­ers were over­worked due to a staff short­age and were forced to work un­der de­plorable con­di­tions. Rio Claro branch is in­fest­ed with ro­dents while the Ch­agua­nas branch should be shut down, he claimed. Work­ers, he added, were ask­ing that their salaries be on a com­pat­i­ble lev­el with work­ers of oth­er state sec­tors in­clud­ing T&TEC, WASA and TSTT. "We are ask­ing for 40 per cent," he said, adding that that fig­ure was still sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than what they should re­ceive.

Claim­ing that NIB has served as the cash cow to the en­tire busi­ness sec­tion, he said the CLI­CO in­quiry re­vealed that $675 mil­lion of NIB funds was dumped in­to CL Fi­nan­cial even while it was crum­bling. He added, "It's not just that peo­ple are dis­sat­is­fied and dis­con­tent­ed, peo­ple are out­raged; NIB has mon­ey not on­ly in CL Fi­nan­cial but sev­er­al of the banks and ma­jor con­glom­er­ates in the coun­try." He vowed that protest ac­tion will "es­ca­late dra­mat­i­cal­ly more," un­til they get a prop­er and de­cent salary of­fer.