Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Dr Daryl Din­di­al are main­tain­ing the State’s of­fer on the out­stand­ing pub­lic sec­tor back­pay, af­ter the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) re­ject­ed what the Gov­ern­ment de­scribed as its “best and fi­nal of­fer” for the set­tle­ment of ar­rears.

The ne­go­ti­a­tions in­volve salary pe­ri­ods cov­er­ing 2014-2016 and 2017-2019 and have be­come a ma­jor point of con­tention be­tween the union and the State.

In a re­cent mes­sage to mem­bers, PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas said the as­so­ci­a­tion had re­ject­ed both an ini­tial pro­pos­al made on Jan­u­ary 30 and a re­vised of­fer pre­sent­ed dur­ing dis­cus­sions last Fri­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Thomas, the orig­i­nal pro­pos­al in­clud­ed 40 per cent cash pay­ments spread over three fis­cal pe­ri­ods and 60 per cent non-cash ben­e­fits. Those non-cash op­tions in­clud­ed off­sets for state mort­gage and rental oblig­a­tions through the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Bank, out­stand­ing tax li­a­bil­i­ties, tu­ition fees at state in­sti­tu­tions, med­ical cov­er­age, tax con­ces­sions on new and roll-on/roll-off ve­hi­cles and the con­ver­sion of cash en­ti­tle­ments in­to leave.

How­ev­er, the union said it re­ject­ed that pro­pos­al and in­stead coun­tered with an of­fer of 80 per cent cash and 20 per cent de­ferred cash through in­ter­est-bear­ing bonds.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day for a com­ment on the lat­est de­vel­op­ment, Tan­coo said ne­go­ti­a­tions were still on­go­ing.

“The ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the CPO and the PSA is con­tin­u­ing in good faith by both sides,” Tan­coo stat­ed.

How­ev­er, he de­clined to com­ment fur­ther on the dis­cus­sions.

“It will be in­ap­pro­pri­ate for me to com­ment on on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions or on mat­ters as­so­ci­at­ed with same,” Tan­coo added.

Mean­while, Din­di­al main­tained that the State’s po­si­tion had not changed.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, the CPO said the con­tents of his me­dia re­lease dat­ed May 22, 2026 “re­main valid and is still the on­ly po­si­tion of the State.”

In that re­lease is­sued last Fri­day, Din­di­al said the Gov­ern­ment’s of­fer re­mained at 40 per cent cash and 60 per cent non-cash ben­e­fits, with an es­ti­mat­ed set­tle­ment val­ue of $3.8 bil­lion.

The CPO al­so stat­ed that re­tirees would re­ceive their ar­rears for the pe­ri­od 2014-2018 ful­ly in cash, with pay­ments ex­pect­ed to be made over two to three fi­nan­cial years.

Din­di­al fur­ther not­ed that the State con­tin­ues to face macro­eco­nom­ic chal­lenges and had giv­en the PSA four weeks to com­mu­ni­cate its po­si­tion on the pro­pos­al.

The PSA, how­ev­er, said it in­tends to sub­mit re­vised pro­pos­als in writ­ing to­day, in­clud­ing a set­tle­ment struc­ture of 60 per cent cash and 40 per cent de­ferred cash, along­side eq­ui­ty in state-owned pub­licly trad­ed as­sets as an ad­di­tion­al de­ferred pay­ment op­tion.