JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU) pres­i­dent Shawn Roberts yes­ter­day sought to al­lay con­cerns among mem­bers who vis­it­ed the union’s Laven­tille head­quar­ters seek­ing an up­date on long-run­ning wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.

A small group of Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) work­ers ar­rived unan­nounced at the of­fice, seek­ing an­swers about de­lays in re­solv­ing their wage de­mands. The work­ers said they had re­ceived no up­date from the union since De­cem­ber.

On De­cem­ber 16, 2025, Roberts and union mem­bers marched from City Gate to the Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion in Port-of-Spain, where he de­liv­ered a let­ter ad­dressed to Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our.

The let­ter out­lined the dif­fi­cult fi­nan­cial cir­cum­stances fac­ing PTSC work­ers, whom Roberts said were strug­gling to sup­port them­selves and their fam­i­lies on cur­rent salaries.

With sev­er­al oth­er unions hav­ing re­cent­ly set­tled ne­go­ti­a­tions, work­ers said they felt ag­griev­ed and want­ed an­swers, in­sist­ing their con­cerns could not have been ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed through a phone call.

Roberts told Guardian Me­dia that a break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion had con­tributed to the work­ers’ frus­tra­tion.

“There was a lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, where in­for­ma­tion wasn’t dis­sem­i­nat­ed to these work­ers. Some of them were un­aware of where the ne­go­ti­a­tions were at. So they came to find out where it’s at right now, and that was re­solved,” he said.

“They just came to find out where the ne­go­ti­a­tions are at be­cause they’re see­ing every­body mak­ing noise, oth­er unions, so they just came for a lit­tle in­for­ma­tion, which they re­ceived.”

Asked for an up­date on ne­go­ti­a­tions, which have re­mained un­re­solved for at least three col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods dat­ing back to 2015, Roberts said the mat­ter re­mains be­fore Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al.

“Right now, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, at the CPO. As usu­al, every­body ne­go­ti­ates with the CPO. So, we’re wait­ing for feed­back from the CPO,” he said.

Roberts added that ne­go­ti­a­tions for the 2021-2023 pe­ri­od are cur­rent­ly be­fore the PTSC board.

He said the union had re­quest­ed a 10 per cent in­crease for each bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od and was await­ing a re­sponse from the State, through the CPO, be­fore be­gin­ning dis­cus­sions on the cur­rent 2023-2026 pe­ri­od.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Din­di­al for an up­date on the out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.

Roberts al­so wel­comed a pro­pos­al to in­crease PTSC op­er­a­tions by ex­pand­ing ser­vice to as many as 30 ad­di­tion­al routes, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

“From what I know, 24 max­is will be com­ing in to deal with cer­tain routes that were not func­tion­ing for the past years. I mean, 30, I think it’s 30 max­is. That is 30 more max­is for 30 more dri­vers to dri­ve, so that is progress at the end of the day,” he said.