Gov­ern­ment has de­scribed as "his­toric" the suc­cess­ful sign­ing of 35 col­lec­tive agree­ments, out of a pos­si­ble list of 57 mat­ters, since May 2010. A Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vice Lim­it­ed (GISL) me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day stat­ed that had been pos­si­ble through the ef­forts of the of­fice of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer and the In­ter-Min­is­te­r­i­al Com­mit­tee on Pub­lic Sec­tor Wage Ne­go­ti­a­tions

Com­ment­ing on the list, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an, in his ca­pac­i­ty as chair­man of the min­is­te­r­i­al team, said it was "an im­pres­sive achieve­ment," giv­en the fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic back­ground against which that agen­da has been ad­vanced. Among the mat­ters set­tled were:

• The set­tle­ment of salary, CO­LA and al­lowances for month­ly paid em­ploy­ees of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pris­ons Ser­vice and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vices for the pe­ri­od 2008 -2010;

• wages for the pe­ri­ods Ju­ly 1, 2008 to June 30, 2011 and Oc­to­ber 1, 2008 to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2011 for staff of the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed barg­ing Units I, II &III; and

• wages and al­lowances for hourly, week­ly, ju­nior and se­nior staff of Lake As­phalt of Trinidad and To­ba­go for the pe­ri­od June 2008 to May 31, 2011.

The at­tached list con­tains full de­tails of the mat­ters which have been suc­cess­ful­ly con­clud­ed over the pe­ri­od.