Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus is ac­cus­ing the cur­rent union head, Fe­l­isha Thomas, of hid­ing from her mem­bers. She is ad­vis­ing Thomas that si­lence is not an op­tion.

Guardian Me­dia has been un­able to con­tact Thomas for near­ly three weeks, a pe­ri­od dur­ing which sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ments have un­fold­ed. These in­clude on­go­ing con­cerns sur­round­ing the pro­posed non-cash pay­ment of a por­tion of back­pay, com­plaints from Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (RHA) work­ers who did not re­ceive back­pay de­spite the PSA hav­ing re­quest­ed their in­clu­sion, and the even­tu­al par­tial pay­ment of ar­rears to pub­lic ser­vants.

Dur­ing this pe­ri­od there has been one PSA-is­sued bul­letin to its mem­bers via its Face­book page. The bul­letin was ad­dressed to RHA-em­ployed work­ers who fell out­side of the “10 per cent” agree­ment be­tween the PSA and the chief per­son­nel of­fi­cer. In that bul­letin dat­ed De­cem­ber 10, the union in­formed its mem­bers, “The PSA has writ­ten to all chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers re­quest­ing an ad­vance on your ar­rears to be paid on or be­fore the 23rd De­cem­ber, 2025.”

In the in­ter­im the union said, “For RHA work­ers who trans­ferred from the Pub­lic Ser­vice, the PSA must now meet with the RHAs to set­tle and sign a sim­i­lar Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment (MoA) for your in­crease in salary, al­lowances, and ar­rears.”

As of De­cem­ber 22, 2025, that re­quest­ed ad­vance on ar­rears was not paid to the RHA work­ers, and those work­ers in­formed Guardian Me­dia that no com­mu­ni­ca­tion has come from the PSA as it per­tains to the MoA with the RHAs.

Sev­er­al at­tempts by Guardian Me­dia to get a com­ment from Thomas dur­ing that pe­ri­od have been un­suc­cess­ful.

When Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo an­nounced that part of the back­pay had been paid to pub­lic ser­vants, Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­firm this with the PSA pres­i­dent; how­ev­er, she could not be reached.

Mean­while, the PSA has lim­it­ed who can com­ment on its Face­book posts, most no­tably its De­cem­ber 10 bul­letin.

That lim­i­ta­tion does not ex­ist on Thomas’ Face­book page. She would have al­so post­ed the bul­letin for RHA work­ers. Re­cent com­ments on that post ac­cuse the PSA pres­i­dent of aban­don­ing her mem­bers.

One poster said, “Mrs Fe­l­isha Thomas, where are you now with ne­go­ti­a­tions with the CEO. We need an up­date.” Re­ply­ing to that post, an­oth­er per­son said, “She par­ty­ing in the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre.”

Thomas was re­cent­ly pho­tographed with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at a Christ­mas func­tion at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre. She was al­so seen in a video danc­ing at the event as well.

An­oth­er Face­book user com­ment­ed, “Well, all the monies that RHA work­ers would have paid PSA need to be re­im­bursed cause no rep­re­sen­ta­tion was done for us. This is a slap to our face.”

For­mer PSA head and now deputy PNM leader Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus told Guardian Me­dia that si­lence is not an op­tion for Thomas.

“Clear­ly the pres­i­dent of the PSA has gone in­to hid­ing. She has lit­er­al­ly gone in­to hid­ing. This is an em­bar­rass­ment. I can’t imag­ine how the PSA will ex­tri­cate it­self and re­build its im­age as long as she re­mains the pres­i­dent. This is un­ac­cept­able. You have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. You have a job to rep­re­sent the work­ers. And part of that is in a sit­u­a­tion like this, you have to keep the pub­lic in­formed. Be­cause that is the way you will keep your mem­ber­ship in­formed.”

Bap­tiste-Primus added, “The fact that they have de­ac­ti­vat­ed the com­ment sec­tion of their page is an in­di­ca­tion of a very low tol­er­ance for crit­i­cism with­in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic or­gan­i­sa­tion and with­in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic state. This is to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able.”

She claimed that Thomas knew quite well the RHA-em­ployed work­ers would not re­ceive their back­pay by Christ­mas.

Asked how she would have han­dled things dif­fer­ent­ly, Bap­tiste-Primus said, “I did not take any de­ci­sion with­out the Gen­er­al Coun­cil and the Con­fer­ence of Del­e­gates ap­prov­ing it. And so far I have not heard the pres­i­dent of the PSA men­tion even the Gen­er­al Coun­cil, far less the Con­fer­ence of Del­e­gates. The Con­fer­ence of Del­e­gates is the high­est rul­ing body in the union.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to for­mer PSA heads Wat­son Duke and Clyde Weath­er­head, but both men de­clined to com­ment.