Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Pres­i­dent, Fe­l­isha Thomas, has ex­pressed her “an­noy­ance” over what she de­scribed as the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer’s de­lay in com­ing to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble to ho­n­our the Gov­ern­ment’s promised ten per cent salary in­crease for pub­lic ser­vants.

And as Thomas pre­pares to ad­dress her mem­bers to­day, she told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, “Some­thing doesn’t seem right.”

Last Mon­day, Thomas ex­pressed con­fi­dence that CPO (Ret’d) Com­man­der Dr Daryl Din­di­al would have in­vit­ed the union to com­mence ne­go­ti­a­tions in the com­ing days.

That con­fi­dence was bol­stered by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, who said he had giv­en the CPO writ­ten in­struc­tions to com­mence talks fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of the 2026 Bud­get de­bate. How­ev­er, Tan­coo said he was lat­er in­formed that a few “pre­req­ui­sites” need­ed to be fi­nalised be­fore face-to-face talks could be­gin.

How­ev­er, Thomas, who wants ne­go­ti­a­tions and sub­se­quent pay­ments com­plet­ed by Christ­mas next month, said the CPO seems to be de­lay­ing the mat­ter.

“I wrote them last week, and I pro­posed Tues­day, Wednes­day, Thurs­day, and Fri­day of this week. I have not re­ceived an ac­knowl­edge­ment of the let­ter. I have not re­ceived any cor­re­spon­dence in­di­cat­ing any of the dates that I have pro­posed to meet, but I in­tend to press on them a bit this week to en­sure that we get a date, be­cause at this point it seems as though the CPO of­fice is now stalling to come to the ta­ble and of­fer 10%,” Thomas said.

Thomas not­ed that the CPO ap­peared ea­ger to en­gage in ne­go­ti­a­tions when the of­fer was a four per cent in­crease un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion. How­ev­er, now that the of­fer has changed un­der the new gov­ern­ment, she said there seems to be a no­tice­able hes­i­tan­cy, which she finds trou­bling.

“They were ea­ger to of­fer 5% for the next pe­ri­od when we didn’t even fin­ish the 4% dis­cus­sions. That was be­fore the court. But now that we have our of­fer of 10%, they seem to be very hes­i­tant to come to the ta­ble, which is some­thing that doesn’t seem right to me, where that is con­cerned,” the PSA Pres­i­dent stressed.

But Thomas said her un­ease goes be­yond mere con­cern now.

“I wouldn’t say con­cern. It’s an an­noy­ance. I would say more than any­thing else. There’s no rea­son for there to be any de­lay in the CPO com­ing to the ta­ble. There was an in­struc­tion giv­en. The min­is­ter has giv­en his writ­ten in­struc­tions to the CPO. What is the de­lay?”

Thomas re­it­er­at­ed that she was ini­tial­ly told by the CPO that his of­fice was prepar­ing cal­cu­la­tions to ac­com­mo­date the salary in­crease. How­ev­er, she is not on board with this ap­proach.

“What cal­cu­la­tions they are prepar­ing? I don’t know be­cause I’m not a take it or leave it per­son. So, they need to come to the ta­ble to en­gage in ne­go­ti­a­tions be­fore they could cal­cu­late any­thing,” Thomas said.

She said if, in fact, the CPO would rather have a proac­tive ap­proach, the math­e­mat­ics should be sim­ple.

“Cal­cu­la­tions should have al­ready been done if they were of­fer­ing 4%. So, re­al­i­ty is, all you have to do is ad­just any cal­cu­la­tions to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion 10% rather than 4%.”

Thomas said she will not be writ­ing to the CPO again and will in­stead ad­dress her mem­ber­ship to­day.

“To­mor­row (to­day) I’m go­ing to do a short video and post on my page, and I’ll take it from there.”

Asked if she would bring this to the at­ten­tion of the Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Thomas said, “He has giv­en his in­struc­tion. There’s no need for me to go to him at this point, oth­er than the CPO needs to come to the ta­ble.”

Ef­forts to con­tact CPO Din­di­al were un­suc­cess­ful. Calls and mes­sages to his mo­bile phone went unan­swered.

Mean­while, at­tempts to get a com­ment from the Fi­nance Min­is­ter and Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste, who is al­so a past PSA pres­i­dent, were al­so un­suc­cess­ful.

The pro­posed wage in­crease will cov­er two pe­ri­ods: 2014–2016 and 2017–2019, rep­re­sent­ing a five per cent in­crease for each pe­ri­od.

Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2026 Bud­get on Oc­to­ber 13, Tan­coo said the Prime Min­is­ter in­struct­ed him to ad­vise the CPO to sub­mit a ten per cent wage in­crease of­fer to pub­lic ser­vants.

Last week, when asked how much the of­fer would cost the state, Tan­coo said the fig­ures would be avail­able on­ly af­ter ne­go­ti­a­tions are com­plet­ed. He added that, un­like the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment would not place a “take it or leave it” of­fer on the ta­ble.

Pri­or to the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tions, the then-op­po­si­tion UNC com­mit­ted that wage ne­go­ti­a­tions for pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees would start with an of­fer of no less than a 10% in­crease for the rel­e­vant bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od (2014-2019).

Thomas, in her ca­pac­i­ty as PSA leader, pub­licly en­dorsed the UNC and stat­ed that a vote for the par­ty was a vote for ne­go­ti­a­tions to be­gin with no less than 10%.