Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales said he would be reading the letter delivered to him by the Oilfields Workers' Trade Union (OWTU) regarding Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC) on Wednesday.
He said, “Today (Tuesday), I'm dealing with Lopinot/Bon Air West issues. I will read the letter tomorrow when I resume ministerial duties,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales' comment came days after he mentioned at the PNM’s Internal Constitutional Consultation in Bon Air that it might not be in the best interest for members of parliament to wear two hats.
“The business of my constituents takes precedence today,” he said yesterday.
Hours before, President General Ancel Roget, along with every T&TEC union branch officer, delivered a letter to the Ministry of Public Utilities office at One Alexandra Place, St Clair. They wrote to inquire about the outstanding negotiations for the collective bargaining period from 2018 to 2020.
“The last time T&TEC workers had a wage adjustment would have been in 2014; we are in 2024, that is ten years,” Roget said.
“It seems like those who do the most, those who are providing that important service to everybody else, they are treated the worst, and something has to be wrong with that,” he added.
Roget said in December 2023, the General Manager of T&TEC, Curvis Francois, wrote to the union stating that T&TEC intended to conclude negotiations in the shortest possible time and was awaiting guidance from the Chief Personnel Officer on the limits for negotiating the cost items.
“In those discussions, you had the General Manager saying to the union that he needs to get a mandate... they need to get a mandate to do what is right,” he said.
The president general also alleged corruption at T&TEC with the awarding of contracts to non-permanent workers, an issue he said the Industrial Court ruled on.
“I say that without fear of contradiction, because we have the evidence to prove it, we have judgment to prove our case before the court, and the court would have admonished them that they ought not to be engaging in this high proliferation of contract work at the expense of permanent jobs,” the unionist explained.
He said a simple commitment like acquiring non-cost items will interfere with the corruption and contractor issue.
“The issue of non-cost items in these negotiations, having raised it with the management, they more or less shut down the negotiation; they are not talking again. So we now have to go to the line minister with the responsibility for T&TEC to let him know, if he did not know, that the non-cost items the management is errant in fixing that,” he said.
Roget explained that workers risk their lives every day, and he does not want the loss of life at a pipeline of Paria Fuel Trading Company or more recently the deaths of babies at Port-of-Spain General Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) to happen again. But he said without the necessary health and safety equipment, it just might.
“The health and safety concerns, the proper PPE, the issue of tools and equipment and materials and all of those things to perform that function are not readily available, and the very basic necessary item of PPEs to do the job to give you a reliable supply of electricity, that is not in place,” he said.
He called on Gonzales to get his team back to the negotiating table with a mandate from the ministry and the board to settle these outstanding negotiations.