The Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer has giv­en the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion four weeks to re­spond to the Gov­ern­ment’s fi­nal set­tle­ment of­fer, which com­pris­es 40 per cent cash and 60 per cent non-cash ben­e­fits.

The pack­age cov­ers ar­rears for the pe­ri­ods Jan­u­ary 1, 2014, to De­cem­ber 31, 2016 and Jan­u­ary 1, 2017, to De­cem­ber 31, 2019, with a to­tal es­ti­mat­ed val­ue of $3.8 bil­lion.

The Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Dr Daryl Din­di­al met with the pres­i­dent and ex­ec­u­tive of the PSA yes­ter­day.

In a re­lease, he said the meet­ing al­so fo­cused on up­dat­ing the union on the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate and the State’s in­abil­i­ty to meet sev­er­al of its de­mands.

He said that dur­ing the re­view pe­ri­ods, eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors re­flect­ed a chal­leng­ing econ­o­my.

De­spite this, he said both sides reached an agree­ment on a ten per cent in­crease, along with the con­sol­i­da­tion of the Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA), re­sult­ing in an over­all av­er­age salary ad­just­ment rang­ing be­tween 15 and 21 per cent for some po­si­tions.

Dr Din­di­al said ad­just­ments were al­so of­fered for sev­er­al al­lowances, in­clud­ing the Spe­cial­i­sa­tion Al­lowance, In­cen­tive Al­lowance, Chauf­feur Al­lowance, On-Call Al­lowance, Shift Bonus Al­lowance, Foren­sic Sci­ence Of­fice Al­lowance, De­com­posed Body Al­lowance and Ad­min­is­tra­tive Al­lowance.

He said the Gov­ern­ment has placed on the ta­ble a pro­pos­al to pay re­tirees their ar­rears for 2014 to 2018 in cash.

The non-cash com­po­nent of the of­fer in­cludes State Mort­gage and Rental Oblig­a­tions through the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Bank, statu­to­ry in­come tax li­a­bil­i­ties, es­tab­lished over­pay­ments, tu­ition fees at state fa­cil­i­ties, one-time full med­ical ben­e­fits, grant of time off and tax­es ap­plic­a­ble to the pur­chase of a mo­tor ve­hi­cle.

He said the set­tle­ment would be paid over two to three fi­nan­cial years to al­low the State to meet oth­er fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions.

Dr Din­di­al de­scribed the pro­pos­al as the Gov­ern­ment’s best and fi­nal of­fer and said the PSA has pre­sent­ed counter-pro­pos­als on the dis­burse­ment of ar­rears, with dis­cus­sions on­go­ing.

He asked the union to com­mu­ni­cate its po­si­tion with­in four weeks of the amend­ed of­fer.