Ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad Lim­it­ed over the fu­ture of the ho­tel are at an ad­vanced stage, with line min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein sig­nalling that an an­nounce­ment on the ho­tel’s fu­ture could come soon.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs, who al­so has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for State-owned Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (eTecK), said dis­cus­sions were pro­gress­ing but he de­clined to dis­close de­tails while ne­go­ti­a­tions re­main on­go­ing.

“I think those ne­go­ti­a­tions are very ad­vanced,” Ho­sein said. “Very soon we will be mak­ing cer­tain an­nounce­ments on the way for­ward.”

The talks come as more than 300 work­ers re­main un­cer­tain about their jobs af­ter Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad warned it could stop op­er­at­ing the land­mark ho­tel on Sep­tem­ber 18, if a new lease agree­ment with eTecK is not fi­nalised.

Hilton’s warn­ing, con­tained in a let­ter to the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU), trig­gered con­cern among em­ploy­ees and prompt­ed ques­tions over the fu­ture of one of the coun­try’s best-known ho­tels.

How­ev­er, eTecK has main­tained that nei­ther the com­pa­ny nor the Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to dis­con­tin­ue the ho­tel’s op­er­a­tions per­ma­nent­ly.

Ho­sein said eTecK had re­spond­ed im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Hilton is­sued what he de­scribed as a con­di­tion­al let­ter and stressed that both par­ties have been en­gaged in in­ten­sive dis­cus­sions.

“There has been a lot of strong ne­go­ti­a­tions on both ends, Hilton and al­so eTecK,” he said. “ETecK, be­ing a State en­ter­prise, has to pro­tect the in­ter­ests of the State.”

The min­is­ter al­so sought to clar­i­fy the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the par­ties, say­ing Hilton em­ploy­ees are not em­ployed by eTecK.

He ex­plained that the ho­tel and the land are leased by the State to eTecK, which in turn sub­leas­es the prop­er­ty to Hilton. While eTecK con­trols the lease arrange­ment, Hilton is re­spon­si­ble for em­ploy­ing the staff and op­er­at­ing the ho­tel.

Ho­sein said le­gal is­sues sur­round­ing that em­ploy­ment re­la­tion­ship formed part of the on­go­ing dis­cus­sions.

“I wouldn’t want, as a line min­is­ter at this point, to com­ment on the de­tails of those arrange­ments sim­ply be­cause I don’t want to prej­u­dice the ne­go­ti­a­tions,” he said.

He added that the Gov­ern­ment was work­ing to pro­tect both the na­tion­al in­ter­est and the em­ploy­ees af­fect­ed by the un­cer­tain­ty.

Ho­sein al­so point­ed to the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tion of the prop­er­ty, say­ing one of the biggest chal­lenges fac­ing it is the need for ma­jor main­te­nance and re­fur­bish­ment.

He crit­i­cised the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion over its an­nounced $400 mil­lion prop­er­ty im­prove­ment pro­gramme, say­ing no clear fi­nanc­ing plan or im­ple­men­ta­tion de­tails were left be­hind.

“When I went in there I saw no de­tails of that, how they’re go­ing to fund it and so on,” he said.

The CWU has warned that Hilton's let­ter has cre­at­ed "con­sid­er­able anx­i­ety" among work­ers and ques­tioned whether the com­pa­ny's cor­re­spon­dence sat­is­fies the re­quire­ments of the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act.

Union sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer said em­ploy­ees are en­ti­tled to cer­tain­ty, trans­paren­cy and com­pli­ance with the law rather than spec­u­la­tion about their fu­ture.