Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Man­age­ment and staff of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) will be shar­ing in a $6 mil­lion bonus, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les an­nounced yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the 2024 Bud­get de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Gon­za­les said the past year had been one of trans­for­ma­tion for TSTT, with VSEP of­fered to staff and im­ple­men­ta­tion of a se­ries of cost cut­ting mea­sures.

He said the com­pa­ny had ex­pe­ri­enced a turn­around and pooled $6 mil­lion, which will be shared eq­ui­tably among man­age­ment and staff as a bonus pay­ment.

Gon­za­les al­so de­tailed fur­ther im­prove­ments in the wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty sec­tors:

• 190,000 ben­e­fit­ting from com­mu­ni­ty wa­ter pro­grammes that in­clude sev­er­al To­ba­go boost­er sta­tions

• Oro­poune Gar­dens now has a 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply af­ter the min­istry cor­rect­ed the last ad­min­is­tra­tion’s de­ci­sion not to sup­ply it from the Ca­roni Wa­ter Treat­ment plant.

• Work is pro­gress­ing on the largest so­lar plant in the re­gion. When com­plet­ed at the end of 2024, it will pro­duce more than 112 megawatts of elec­tric­i­ty and re­duce T&T’s green­house gas emis­sions from the pow­er gen­er­a­tion sec­tor by 150 tonnes an­nu­al­ly.

• The Gand­hi Union cir­cuit will fa­cil­i­tate trans­fer of pow­er from TGU

• The Na­tion­al Re­cy­cling Pol­i­cy and the Bev­er­age Con­tain­er De­posit Re­turn Pol­i­cy have beeen sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net for ap­proval.