Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor - Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) has re­ject­ed the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion’s (PSA) ac­cu­sa­tions of stalling wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and is in­stead ques­tion­ing why the union op­pos­es re­view­ing the state of the econ­o­my be­fore talks be­gin.

PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas said in a Face­book video on Tues­day evening that the union was in­vit­ed to meet with the CPO this Fri­day, but she dis­agreed with the pro­posed agen­da.

“Com­rades, you are aware, I am aware of the state of the econ­o­my, and I don’t un­der­stand why the CPO’s of­fice is be­hav­ing as though we are now com­menc­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions,” Thomas said.

She said the eco­nom­ic pre­sen­ta­tion was al­ready done in 2022, when she be­lieves the wage talks ef­fec­tive­ly be­gan, and there­fore sees no need for an­oth­er one now.

Thomas has dis­missed the move as a stalling tac­tic, ques­tion­ing whether CPO, Re­tired Com­man­der Dr Daryl Din­di­al, has been man­dat­ed to de­lay the “ten per cent” wage talks and pre­vent her mem­bers from re­ceiv­ing the back­pay that she promised by Christ­mas.

The CPO said the time­line he had pre­vi­ous­ly giv­en to the PSA, which was to start wage talks in the last week of No­vem­ber, re­mains.

How­ev­er, the CPO said the econ­o­my does not re­main stag­nant, and Fri­day’s meet­ing will be the re­spon­si­ble step in set­ting the foun­da­tion to com­mence ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“I am not aware what in­for­ma­tion the PSA has, but I am cer­tain they will not have all of the de­tails on the state of the econ­o­my like the MoF (Min­istry of Fi­nance). In fact, even the CPO’s of­fice does not pos­sess all of the in­for­ma­tion. We re­ly on the MoF da­ta. The ques­tion is, why would the PSA not be in­ter­est­ed in un­der­stand­ing the deep­er chal­lenges af­fect­ing our econ­o­my?” the CPO asked.

He still wants to have the meet­ing on Fri­day.

“I am hope­ful they at­tend the meet­ing to ei­ther val­i­date what they al­ready claim to know or learn more about the sta­tus of the econ­o­my to ad­vise their mem­ber­ship go­ing for­ward.”

Din­di­al said that the unions are fa­mil­iar with the es­tab­lished pro­ce­dure for wage ne­go­ti­a­tions and have nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pressed any dis­agree­ment or re­sis­tance to it.

“In fact, they look for­ward to en­gag­ing the MoF pro­fes­sion­als to clar­i­fy tech­ni­cal de­tails on the state of the econ­o­my be­cause they are ex­pect­ed to ap­prise their mem­ber­ship. As in­di­cat­ed be­fore, this is a pre­cur­sor to ne­go­ti­a­tions.”

Ad­dress­ing claims that there may be some clan­des­tine in­struc­tion to de­lay wage talks, the CPO stressed that the Min­istry of Fi­nance has al­ready in­struct­ed that ne­go­ti­a­tions com­mence.

“In fact, I spoke with her (Thomas) yes­ter­day on the po­ten­tial dates to meet.”

The ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­ods are 2014-2016 and 2017-2019.

Dur­ing the Oc­to­ber 13 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo in­formed the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that, based on in­struc­tions from the Prime Min­is­ter, he ad­vised the CPO to sub­mit a re­vised of­fer of 10 per cent.

Thomas has main­tained that the ne­go­ti­a­tions could be con­clud­ed and pay­ments is­sued by Christ­mas, ar­gu­ing that the over­all cost of the 4 per cent in­crease of­fered by the CPO in 2022 had al­ready been cal­cu­lat­ed, mak­ing any up­ward ad­just­ment straight­for­ward.

At­tempts to con­tact Thomas to find out if she will be at­tend­ing Fri­day’s meet­ing were un­suc­cess­ful.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter Tan­coo, when asked about these de­vel­op­ments, said, “The CPO is the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly es­tab­lished au­thor­i­ty re­spon­si­ble for con­duct­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty unions, in this case, the PSA. “

He added, “Al­though pub­lic re­marks of­ten form part of the broad­er dy­nam­ics of any ne­go­ti­a­tion process, I ex­pect that dis­cus­sions will con­tin­ue through the prop­er chan­nels and in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures, in an en­vi­ron­ment of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and mu­tu­al re­spect.”