An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers
@guardian.co.tt

Hilton Trinidad work­ers are still seek­ing clar­i­ty on sev­er­ance pay­ments fol­low­ing a town hall meet­ing with man­age­ment yes­ter­day.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer said the meet­ing was held yes­ter­day, with e TecK ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment, in­clud­ing its pres­i­dent, Hilton’s gen­er­al man­ag­er and di­rec­tor of hu­man re­sources at­tend­ing.

“The union ex­ec­u­tive was not present at that meet­ing for the sole pur­pose that this was a meet­ing for the em­ploy­er and the em­ploy­ees.”

Among the con­cerns raised by em­ploy­ees was whether they could still re­ceive sev­er­ance pay­ments they had an­tic­i­pat­ed dur­ing the un­cer­tain­ty over the ho­tel’s fu­ture.

“Some of the is­sues or ques­tions raised at that meet­ing, as best as I was told, or du­ly in­formed, is that work­ers were still in­ter­est­ed, some of them, in ac­tu­al­ly re­ceiv­ing their sev­er­ance pay­ments.”

Ogeer re­called that the union had cau­tioned ear­ly in the dis­cus­sions against cre­at­ing an ex­pec­ta­tion that work­ers would re­ceive sev­er­ance, as that could have led em­ploy­ees to be­lieve the ho­tel would close af­ter Sep­tem­ber 18.

“The union would have said very ear­ly in the be­gin­ning of these dis­cus­sions that we thought it to be pre­ma­ture to ac­tu­al­ly give work­ers that ex­pec­ta­tion, or cre­ate that ex­pec­ta­tion.”

The is­sue has now left some work­ers ques­tion­ing whether the sev­er­ance cal­cu­la­tions pre­vi­ous­ly pro­vid­ed to them re­main rel­e­vant fol­low­ing the new arrange­ment.

“We said, why do that if you are not in a po­si­tion to say it is ac­tu­al­ly doom and gloom?”

Ogeer in­di­cat­ed that man­age­ment had sought to calm em­ploy­ees’ con­cerns dur­ing yes­ter­day’s meet­ing.

“What I can say is the man­age­ment team al­layed the fears or quelled the con­cerns of the work­ers.”

The mood among em­ploy­ees re­mains mixed, with some fo­cused on their fi­nan­cial ex­pec­ta­tions and oth­ers re­lieved to re­tain their jobs.

“The con­ti­nu­ity of em­ploy­ment and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of jobs, I be­lieve, is of para­mount con­sid­er­a­tion and con­cern, and that is equal­ly im­por­tant to both the com­pa­ny and the union at this point.”

The CWU in­tends to write Hilton man­age­ment seek­ing a meet­ing ear­ly this week to dis­cuss the con­cerns and mat­ters re­lat­ing to work­ers’ fu­ture.

Ogeer de­scribed the town hall as well re­ceived and in­di­cat­ed that a small­er group would con­tin­ue en­gag­ing staff on any out­stand­ing ques­tions.

The meet­ing came days af­ter Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that eTecK had ac­quired all is­sued and out­stand­ing shares of Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad Ltd (HITL) un­der a share pur­chase agree­ment. Un­der the new struc­ture, Hilton con­tin­ues to man­age and op­er­ate the ho­tel while the State, through new state-owned com­pa­ny, HotelTT As­set Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd, owns the land and build­ings on the St Anns prop­er­ty.

Ques­tions over share pur­chase

Guardian Me­dia’s ex­am­i­na­tion of a Com­pa­nies Reg­istry doc­u­ment stamped Au­gust 17, 2026, found that HITL had 1,682 is­sued and out­stand­ing shares and stat­ed cap­i­tal of $168,200.

The doc­u­ment lists Hilton World­wide Hold­ings Inc as the ben­e­fi­cial own­er, through two Hilton sub­sidiaries hold­ing 169 and 1,514 shares, re­spec­tive­ly.

HITL's 2026 an­nu­al re­turn list­ed Hilton gen­er­al man­ag­er Olivi­er Mau­maire, di­rec­tor of fi­nance Shi­va Singh and Sheila Ger­man, Hilton’s re­gion­al vice pres­i­dent, op­er­a­tions and fi­nance for Mex­i­co and Caribbean, Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, as di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny.

How­ev­er, those three di­rec­tors ceased to hold of­fice on Sep­tem­ber 1 and were re­placed by sev­en e TecK di­rec­tors: chair Susil­la Ramkissoon-Mark, Judy Beepath-Ramjohn, Im­ran Khan, Keon Sa­roops­ingh, An­tonel­la Nar­i­nesh, Wendy Wor­rell and Ashel Mur­ray.

Four oth­er eTecK di­rec­tors, Bill Ram­rat­tan, Wazeer Aleem, Ja­son Sandy and Michael Scott, were not list­ed as HITL di­rec­tors.

These cor­po­rate changes have prompt­ed an in­dus­try source to ques­tion pre­cise­ly what Gov­ern­ment ac­quired through the share pur­chase, how much was paid for the shares and how the op­er­at­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Hilton had changed.

The source al­so ques­tioned the ex­pect­ed re­turn to the State, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the sub­stan­tial cap­i­tal in­vest­ment re­quired to bring the ho­tel back up to stan­dard.

The Gov­ern­ment pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that sig­nif­i­cant work is re­quired at the prop­er­ty. Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein has ref­er­enced the need for sub­stan­tial ex­pen­di­ture on re­pairs and im­prove­ments.

The source ques­tioned what the coun­try stands to gain from that in­vest­ment.

“Be­cause it’s an in­vest­ment. The coun­try is be­ing asked for mon­ey.”

The source al­so ques­tioned whether the pub­lic has been giv­en enough in­for­ma­tion about the fi­nan­cial side of the trans­ac­tion.

“What did we buy when we ac­quired all those shares in that com­pa­ny?”

The source al­so wants the Gov­ern­ment to dis­close the pur­chase price and ex­plain “how the op­er­at­ing re­la­tion­ship fun­da­men­tal­ly changed”.

The fi­nal ques­tion, the source main­tained, is the amount of mon­ey the in­vest­ment is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate for the coun­try.

ETecK has not pub­licly dis­closed the fi­nan­cial con­sid­er­a­tion paid for the shares or pro­vid­ed a pro­ject­ed fi­nan­cial re­turn from the trans­ac­tion. Its an­nounce­ment al­so did not pro­vide fi­nan­cial fig­ures for the ac­qui­si­tion.