Dr Win­ford James

Max Al­bert and I con­tin­ue our se­ries on the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my ques­tion.

With your in­dul­gence, we wish to stay there for a while longer, for we be­lieve there are still is­sues ger­mane to the To­ba­go cause to be told. To­day, we con­tin­ue with a sto­ry Max Al­bert feels du­ty bound to tell. Some­times a ca­su­al con­ver­sa­tion un­earths shock­ing, even fright­en­ing truths. So here goes.

The Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion won the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions on De­cem­ber 09, 1996 and set about gov­ern­ing. The ques­tion of how As­sem­bly­men were to be paid quick­ly arose, as it be­came ob­vi­ous that the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion was not pre­pared for our on­board­ing and per­haps could not have been. The leg­is­la­tion to gov­ern the new As­sem­bly, Act # 40 of 1996, was new off the press, hav­ing been passed and as­sent­ed to on­ly a few days be­fore, but con­tained no spe­cif­ic num­bers in terms of pay­ment for As­sem­bly­men. The mech­a­nisms for those de­ter­mi­na­tions were catered for in the con­fu­sion be­tween sec­tion 16 ss 2 and ss 5, and thus, a quick de­ci­sion had to be made in re­spect of what our re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­age should con­tain since month end was days away.

Ho­choy Charles and the then prime min­is­ter, Bas­deo Pan­day, were not on prop­er speak­ing terms, so Ho­choy, nev­er one to be eas­i­ly shack­led, was not pre­pared to leave his Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil in lim­bo. With their ap­proval, he paid us $9,000 per month, which he thought was fair and rea­son­able, whilst await­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion. His own salary was fixed in law and com­pa­ra­ble to that of a Cab­i­net Min­is­ter and thus he had no per­son­al dif­fi­cul­ty in that re­gard.

Re­ports from the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion came years lat­er and they stat­ed we had been over­paid. They rec­om­mend­ed that we be paid a salary low­er than what the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil had agreed to pay us and, lat­er, they in­creased that sum to one high­er than the $9,000 the Ex­ec­u­tive had agreed to pay. The re­sult was sig­nif­i­cant over­pay­ments over a pe­ri­od, which were even­tu­al­ly de­duct­ed from im­proved salaries au­tho­rised by a fi­nal SRC re­port, which came lat­er in our term. The bal­ance, $600, was what was paid out.

We nev­er saw the cal­cu­la­tions! All of us re­ceived bal­ances of most­ly $600 or there­abouts.

Ho­choy’s pay­ment of $9,000 was there­fore nei­ther ar­bi­trary nor reck­less. It was made pur­suant to the As­sem­bly’s au­thor­i­ty un­der sec­tion 16(5).

But over­paid As­sem­bly­men? How could one be over­paid on ac­count of re­mu­ner­a­tion law­ful­ly fixed un­der the very leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing the As­sem­bly, more specif­i­cal­ly un­der sec­tion 25 (1-2)?

Lat­er on, when we were out of of­fice, Anselm Lon­don, the then sec­re­tary of fi­nance, es­tab­lished a small unit to ex­am­ine the so-called over­pay­ment. They con­firmed the over­pay­ment. How then were we to be paid whilst gov­ern­ing To­ba­go, and what now was our fate, the mat­ter hav­ing shift­ed in­to the hands of the PNM from Jan­u­ary 29th 2001?

The an­swer, when it even­tu­al­ly came, was dev­as­tat­ing. The cal­cu­la­tions left most of us with $600. Yes, six hun­dred dol­lars. How did they ar­rive at that sum? Orville Lon­don, the brand-new chief sec­re­tary, ap­proved of it all with­out con­sul­ta­tion, con­ver­sa­tion, con­sid­er­a­tion, or states­man­ship!

Do not ask if I cried. I was left pen­ni­less, with­out a gra­tu­ity and with­out a pen­sion.

I had left a well-paid job at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, where I would have re­ceived a siz­able enough gra­tu­ity com­men­su­rate with salaries paid at the time and a live­able pen­sion to­day.

Oth­ers suf­fered the same fate too. Miri­am Cae­sar-Moore, Stan­ley Beard, Judy Bobb, Car­lyle Dick, Do­lores Ed­wards, Eu­trice Thorn­hill, and Bev­er­ly Ram­sey-Moore, all of us ab­solute­ly be­lit­tled. Some of us had left well-paid jobs and ca­reers across the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors to un­ques­tion­ing­ly fur­ther the dream of an au­tonomous To­ba­go.

Stan­ley Beard tried to re­ly up­on a du­bi­ous pen­sion and gra­tu­ity arrange­ment un­der the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. He re­ceived noth­ing be­cause his As­sem­bly ser­vice was treat­ed as a break in ser­vice.

Judy Bobb ac­cept­ed a mod­est ac­count­ing job in the As­sem­bly it­self, now rel­e­gat­ed to re­port­ing to sub­or­di­nates she once both made pol­i­cy for and in­struct­ed. Do­lores Ed­wards found work in the URP. Miri­am Cae­sar-Moore and I at­tempt­ed an agri­cul­tur­al project in Fish­ing Pond, Trinidad, where we were flood­ed out twice and even­tu­al­ly re­turned home.

Then came COVID-19 and de­stroyed what had be­come a thriv­ing restau­rant and a bak­ery en­ter­prise I start­ed in 2009.

Ash­worth Jack at­tempt­ed to per­suade Lon­don to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion by ne­go­ti­at­ing and gain­ing ap­proval for for­mer As­sem­bly­men and Sec­re­taries on both sides of the po­lit­i­cal di­vide to re­ceive pen­sion and gra­tu­ity arrange­ments. He ig­nored us all. From 2001 to date, the mat­ter re­mains un­re­solved. In the process, some were called home: Do­lores, Jeff, Car­lyle, Stan­ley.

I vis­it­ed Stan­ley short­ly be­fore his pass­ing. And … it was the first time I had ever seen him weep. He was in a wheel­chair, frail, and un­able to pay his bills. An in­tel­lec­tu­al gi­ant had be­come a shad­ow of his for­mer glo­ry, and I won­dered grim­ly about my own mor­tal­i­ty and fu­ture. I was heart­bro­ken.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is the Re­pub­lic’s sec­ond-high­est con­sti­tu­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion. Yet many of its ear­ly of­fice hold­ers were left with salaries that did not re­flect their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, pen­sion arrange­ments that proved in­ad­e­quate, and gra­tu­ities that, in some cas­es, amount­ed to al­most noth­ing.

The pi­o­neers who plant­ed the corn were for­got­ten by the Re­pub­lic.

This is the sto­ry of the 600. The sto­ry of men and women who left well-pay­ing jobs to serve To­ba­go for next to noth­ing. The sto­ry of how they were un­der­paid and died with­out prop­er recog­ni­tion.

Per­haps Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine should in­ter­vene un­der Sec­tion 16 ss 5?

Dr Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment and pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s.

He has al­so writ­ten thou­sands of columns for all ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try.