Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) has ac­cept­ed a ten per cent of­fer from act­ing Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Wendy Bar­ton and is hop­ing pub­lic ser­vants will re­ceive their back­pay by Christ­mas.

Speak­ing with the me­dia af­ter a three-hour-long meet­ing with Bar­ton at the CPO’s of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas said the of­fer was a promise made and kept by the Gov­ern­ment.

“I’m hap­py to say to the mem­ber­ship of the PSA this af­ter­noon that an­oth­er promise made is an­oth­er promise de­liv­ered. We have in our hands, de­liv­ered by Act­ing CPO Ms Wendy Bar­ton, an of­fer of ten per cent which the PSA will be re­spond­ing to by this evening (yes­ter­day). As we have said, our main aim is to en­sure that we close these ne­go­ti­a­tions and put some monies in our mem­bers’ pock­ets by Christ­mas.”

A video lat­er re­leased by Thomas in­di­cat­ed that the PSA was ac­cept­ing the of­fer on be­half of its mem­bers.

The ten per cent cov­ers two ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­ods: 2014 to 2016 and 2017 to 2019.

Asked if she be­lieved the mon­ey would be paid, as there was no al­lo­ca­tion in the bud­get, Thomas said the Gov­ern­ment would not make an of­fer it could not keep.

“The Gov­ern­ment has made a com­mit­ment, and I’m quite sure the com­mit­ment wasn’t made just like that; the Gov­ern­ment will de­liv­er. Yes, the of­fer is on the ta­ble and I’m quite sure that the work­ers will re­ceive their back pay.”

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, when asked out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day about the PSA ne­go­ti­a­tions, said the ten per cent promise would be kept.

“The Gov­ern­ment has the funds to keep its oblig­a­tions and to keep the com­mit­ments that it has made to the PSA dur­ing the cam­paign, and that the CPO will ne­go­ti­ate go­ing for­ward.”

He added that the of­fer was just a step in the ne­go­ti­at­ing process. But when asked about the back pay be­ing paid by the end of the year, the min­is­ter said he could not pre­dict that.

“I can­not pre­de­ter­mine the out­come, and you’re ask­ing me to spec­u­late on the out­come and the tim­ing even of a ne­go­ti­a­tion.”

He added, “Just to be clear, ten per cent is a fig­ure, but there’s a process for which ne­go­ti­a­tions must take place, which is to dis­ag­gre­gate how that ten per cent is con­fig­ured. So I sus­pect that there’s still go­ing to be ne­go­ti­a­tion. How it ends, as I said, is based on what the con­ver­sa­tion be­tween the CPO and the PSA is go­ing to do. I’m not go­ing to jump and as­sert.”

Thomas said yes­ter­day’s pre­sen­ta­tion made by Bar­ton seemed “more pos­i­tive” than the pre­vi­ous state of the econ­o­my pre­sen­ta­tion by CPO Dr Dar­ryl Din­di­al.

Thomas had pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that she was not in­ter­est­ed in re­view­ing any state-of-the-econ­o­my pre­sen­ta­tion as the of­fer was not a new ne­go­ti­a­tion but a con­tin­u­a­tion of a stalled one.

Tan­coo, how­ev­er, said the of­fer meant ne­go­ti­a­tions had now be­gun.

“This is a new gov­ern­ment. This is a new state of the econ­o­my. And for that pur­pose, this, in fact, is a new of­fer as well. So, from my un­der­stand­ing, this is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a con­tin­u­a­tion of the old ne­go­ti­a­tion. This is, in fact, a ne­go­ti­a­tion based on new terms on both sides.”