Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union, Joanne Ogeer, yes­ter­day called on Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les to meet with the union on is­sues fac­ing the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT).

Speak­ing dur­ing a protest out­side the min­is­ter’s of­fice at One Alexan­dra, St Clair, Ogeer said the union was fo­cused on the sur­vival of the TSTT and the well-be­ing of work­ers.

“We are protest­ing as it re­lates to the state and fu­ture of TSTT. Where the com­pa­ny is go­ing, no new busi­ness, the sur­viv­abil­i­ty and vi­a­bil­i­ty? We are here to speak about the frus­tra­tion of cus­tomers. We are speak­ing al­so as rep­re­sent­ing se­nior and ju­nior staff of the CWU, who are em­ploy­ees of TSTT. We are de­mo­ti­vat­ed, dis­en­chant­ed, dis­en­fran­chised, you name it,” she said.

Ogeer said Gon­za­les is yet to meet with the union since as­sum­ing of­fice in 2020 and ques­tioned whether he on­ly con­sid­ered the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) as part of his port­fo­lio.

When con­tact­ed, how­ev­er, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les said he was will­ing to meet with the CWU.

“I have no dif­fi­cul­ty in meet­ing with the union to dis­cuss mat­ters that are with­in my re­mit to dis­cuss. I will wel­come the op­por­tu­ni­ty,” he said.

But the CWU al­so wants an­swers from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

Yes­ter­day, Ogeer said the next step would be to protest against Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s in­ac­tion in re­leas­ing the de­tails of a foren­sic au­dit in­to TSTT. She al­leged it high­light­ed cor­rupt prac­tices.

“We need to get rid of the mis­cre­ants that are al­leged­ly cor­rupt­ing TSTT and are be­ing un­just­ly en­riched and that is the is­sue,” she said, adding that on­ly some of the cor­rup­tion in TSTT was ven­ti­lat­ed in a JSC.

Ogeer said with an af­ter-tax prof­it of $95.2 mil­lion (US$14 mil­lion) for its fi­nan­cial year end­ing March 31, 2023, she wants TSTT to pay “the en­gine room” of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, the work­ers. She em­pha­sised that re­tirees should re­ceive their mon­ey with an in­crease from the $600/$900 they now re­ceive to $3,000 a month.

“What we are ask­ing for and we are clam­our­ing for and will turn up the heat for is to en­sure that if the com­pa­ny did make (a) prof­it, the first thing it should do is pay yuh debts. Pay yuh work­ers, the en­gine room of TSTT.”

On an­oth­er mat­ter, Ogeer said sea­far­ers should be con­cerned that work­ers at the North Post Ra­dio (NPR) are over­worked, with man­age­ment re­fus­ing to lis­ten to their plight. Added to that, she said, work­ers have not re­ceived per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment for some time and uni­forms have not been re­newed in four years.