NADALEEN SINGH

From los­ing $100 mil­lion to mak­ing a prof­it of $78 mil­lion in four years: that's the fi­nan­cial po­si­tion the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Ltd (MTS) can boast of as it cel­e­brates 30 years of ser­vice in T&T. Speak­ing to the Busi­ness Guardian at his cor­po­rate of­fice at Aranguez Plaza, Aranguez, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Lennox Rat­tans­ingh said MTS is do­ing well.

"We have grown to a rev­enue base of $320 mil­lion and an em­ploy­ee base of close to 5,000 em­ploy­ees. Ten years ago, we had a rev­enue base of $78 mil­lion, with an em­ploy­ee base of 2,500 em­ploy­ees ten years ago. Right now, we are prob­a­bly the largest state en­ter­prise."

In March 2006, Rat­tans­ingh took up the reins of MTS's lead­er­ship.

"When I as­sumed of­fice, we had neg­a­tive growth of $6 mil­lion be­tween 2003 to 2006." He said MTS to­day has up-to-date and au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments and that "pru­dent" man­age­ment con­tributed to the up­dat­ed fi­nan­cial records. Rat­tans­ingh deems the com­pa­ny's turn­around to ser­vic­ing ex­ist­ing clients rather than try­ing to get in­to every sin­gle mar­ket.

Sta­bil­i­ty

Rat­tans­ingh said man­ag­ing MTS is not all about prof­itabil­i­ty, but al­so pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, which re­quires hav­ing a sta­ble work­force.

"We paid out the largest back­pay in the his­to­ry of the com­pa­ny over this three-year pe­ri­od. MTS paid $65 mil­lion in back­pay to se­cu­ri­ty and main­te­nance work­ers. "On Fri­day last, we signed an agree­ment with bar­gain­ing units two and three for an in­crease of a lit­tle more than 15 per cent. "The back­pay is ex­pect­ed to be paid on De­cem­ber 4. The av­er­age back­pay would be $30,000 to $40,000 a per­son in this unit." He said for the last three years, there were salary in­creas­es of up to 70 per cent in some in­stances. "We paid out a back­pay to se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers of $32 mil­lion. Our nor­mal main­te­nance work­ers, we paid out a back­pay of $27 mil­lion and we in­creased their salaries to near­ly 30 or 40 per cent. In all cas­es, around 30 per cent, and still make prof­its." MTS's month­ly pay­roll is $24 mil­lion.

Busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is MTS's largest client. The com­pa­ny al­so pro­vides se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices for schools in To­ba­go.

MTS is now look­ing for new busi­ness in the re­gion. "There are two ar­eas of se­cu­ri­ty we are mov­ing to. One up the is­lands to sell our "know how" in se­cu­ri­ty to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in var­i­ous is­lands. We have been able to pack to­geth­er a scope of work and a train­ing pro­gramme and con­cep­tu­alise the se­cu­ri­ty risk in the school en­vi­ron­ment, in a Caribbean con­text, that no one else has done. The da­ta would be used in con­sul­tan­cy." An­oth­er project which MTS is ex­plor­ing is pro­vid­ing train­ing for those in­ter­est­ed in be­com­ing se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers.

"We have been talk­ing to the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil of T&T (ACTT), the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) so that MTS can be­come ac­cred­it­ed to be­come a train­ing agency. We are look­ing at 2010 to roll out our se­cu­ri­ty agency." Apart from se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers po­si­tioned at schools, MTS has an­oth­er batch of of­fi­cers re­ferred to as elite se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers who are as­signed to state en­ti­ties such as the ju­di­cia­ry, all mag­is­trates' courts and the Hall of Jus­tice. Rat­tans­ingh said train­ing for these of­fi­cers is to be re­vamped to deal with such is­sues as kid­nap­ping and ter­ror­ism.

Chal­lenges

Rat­tans­ingh said he is con­cerned about what he calls "the un­even play­ing field" when it comes to pay­ing over­time be­cause some com­pa­nies con­tra­vene the min­i­mum wage law and do not pay work­ers dou­ble or triple time that is due. "Some main­te­nance com­pa­nies are not unionised. Se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies, by and large, are not unionised. That's the en­vi­ron­ment that we op­er­ate un­der and we still have to be com­pet­i­tive. "We do not re­ceive a stipend from the State. We do not re­ceive a sub­ven­tion and we do not re­ceive a dol­lar from the State. Even though you are a state en­ter­prise, it doesn't mean that you are get­ting sub­ven­tions from the Gov­ern­ment; statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties may."

State en­ter­pris­es are al­so charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of mak­ing prof­its and gen­er­ate its own rev­enue, Rat­tans­ingh said. He said MTS ten­ders for jobs just as oth­ers do while serv­ing the State's needs. For the field to be even, Rat­tans­ingh said it is nec­es­sary for com­pa­nies to fol­low the laws of T&T such as: Os­ha or ful­fil their statu­to­ry oblig­a­tions as an en­ti­ty. He ques­tions whether these rules are be­ing ad­hered to. "If there were polic­ing in the in­dus­try, we would know for sure if the play­ing field was even." MTS is not com­plain­ing, he said, but re­spond­ing by pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty ser­vice. On a dai­ly ba­sis, he said MTS in­ter­acts with at least 300,000 peo­ple.

Re­gard­ing con­tracts, Rat­tans­ingh said the loss-mak­ing ones were ter­mi­nat­ed, the most re­cent is the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in To­ba­go be­cause it was un­prof­itable. "We have de­cid­ed not to take jobs we don't have mon­ey for, so that we would not in­cur large li­a­bil­i­ties." To cope with the eco­nom­ic down­turn, the MTS boss said it has turned to To­ba­go to get new con­tracts. That ven­ture has been re­ward­ing. MTS is look­ing at get­ting in­to the con­struc­tion of com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres and do­ing school re­pairs. MTS al­so got the con­tract for the li­brary in To­ba­go. "One of the things we have agreed up­on is to build a goat race com­plex and the sod turn­ing is sup­posed to be soon." From 2006 to 2009, Rat­tans­ingh de­clared that MTS man­ages be­tween $500 mil­lion to $1 bil­lion in projects. He said the bulk of its projects are the schools, each one of which was com­plet­ed on time.

Prod­ucts

Out­side of the Po­lice Ser­vice and T&T De­fence Force, Rat­tans­ingh said MTS has the largest se­cu­ri­ty force in the Caribbean with 2,800 se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers. Rat­tans­ingh said MTS is notic­ing trends when it comes to the crime sit­u­a­tion. "Quite a few of­fi­cers have been at­tacked. The so­ci­ety and the en­vi­ron­ment have changed. MTS has changed with the time and en­sure cer­tain pro­ce­dures are in place. For in­stance, armed of­fi­cers are as­signed to jobs in pairs. We will refuse a job if the client wants one of­fi­cer as an armed per­son, based on safe­ty for our em­ploy­ees. Un­less two per­sons are deal­ing with a firearm, we are not go­ing to al­low that site to take that job."

He said with the changes in crime trends, prepa­ra­tion comes first. That means se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers must be up to par with their skills and train­ing. "We must now en­sure that we have prop­er ma­chin­ery for our of­fi­cers. We en­sure prop­er train­ing. We en­sure prop­er gear, such as bul­let-proof vests. MTS has in­sured our of­fi­cers with life in­sur­ance and there are a num­ber of oth­er things which we are look­ing at, in­clud­ing GPS track­ing." He said his cadre of se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers is short of 500 of­fi­cers be­cause MTS is care­ful about who is cho­sen for this type of job, un­like some oth­er se­cu­ri­ty firms.

"To­day you pass on the street, you see a 'fel­la' pitch­ing mar­bles, and then in the evening, you see him hired by a pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firm."

About MTS

In 1979, MTS of­fi­cial­ly be­came a state en­ter­prise. The first board of di­rec­tors was head­ed by Mal­colm Jones, now chair­man of the Petrotrin board. MTS start­ed off main­tain­ing 25 schools, gen­er­at­ing rev­enue of $17 mil­lion with 500 em­ploy­ees. "Ini­tial­ly, our man­date was se­cu­ri­ty and main­te­nance of schools but, in 1982, our man­date changed to deal­ing with pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies, oth­er gov­ern­ment min­istries and any­thing un­der the sun that we want­ed to get in­to."

Rat­tans­ingh's as­cen­sion at MTS:

Jan­u­ary 1996 Mar­ket­ing as­sis­tant, mar­ket­ing di­vi­sion

1997 Mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer

1998 Mar­ket­ing man­ag­er

1999 Busi­ness de­vel­op­ment man­ag­er

2000 Di­vi­sion­al man­ag­er, pri­vate sec­tor de­vel­op­ment

2001 Di­vi­sion­al man­ag­er, mar­ket­ing

2003 Act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (one month)

2004 Act­ing CEO (one month)

2005 Act­ing CEO (one month)

March 2006 As­sumed CEO's po­si­tion

Au­gust 2006 CEO's po­si­tion con­firmed