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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Fire officers: 4 per cent wage offer disrespectful

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1134 days ago
20220614

CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

“Quite dis­re­spect­ful.”

That is how pres­i­dent of the Fire Of­fi­cers As­so­ci­a­tion Leo Ramkissoon has de­scribed the four per cent salary in­crease of­fered to po­lice of­fi­cers by Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al on Mon­day.

The CPO pro­posed the four per cent in­crease for the years 2014 to 2019.

But while they will get their new of­fer to­day, Ramkissoon is cer­tain his mem­bers will not be hap­py with four per cent.

“I don’t be­lieve it will be ac­cept­ed,” he said.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day, Ramkisson said, “Four per cent is ex­act­ly what we would have feared from the start when you start off with a two per cent.”

He said with such a low of­fer be­ing placed on the ta­ble, it cre­ates a much longer dis­tance to trav­el to get to what is con­sid­ered by the sci­en­tif­ic re­search as be­ing rea­son­able.

For fire of­fi­cers, that rea­son­able in­crease would be 15 per cent for 2014 to 2016 and CO­LA (Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance) be­ing con­sol­i­dat­ed with salaries.

Nev­er­the­less, Ramkissoon said that they will go in­to the meet­ing with an “open mind,” try­ing not to en­ter with pre­con­ceived no­tions.

He said what­ev­er of­fer is giv­en, he will con­sult his mem­ber­ship be­fore an of­fi­cial re­sponse is pre­sent­ed.

An­oth­er ma­jor union sit­ting be­fore the CPO this week is the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA).

As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent An­to­nia Tekah-De Fre­itas yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that while they use a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to ne­go­ti­a­tion, the mar­ket sur­vey ap­proach, a 4 per cent of­fer is con­cern­ing.

“I would say, and TTUTA would say, and unions would say that even that quan­tum is not enough to al­low the work­er in what­ev­er sec­tor to sur­vive giv­en the cur­rent cost of liv­ing and to there­fore main­tain a de­cent stan­dard of liv­ing,” she said.

Tekah-De­Fre­itas added that with ris­ing fu­el, food and oth­er prices, ”one has to won­der whether the Gov­ern­ment is se­ri­ous about the wel­fare of work­ers and cit­i­zens on mak­ing such an of­fer.”

How­ev­er, re­gard­less of how she feels pri­or to the meet­ing, she said TTUTA is adopt­ing a wait-and-see ap­proach.

For teach­ers, her hope is to close the salary gap based on mar­ket sur­vey re­sults which com­pare sim­i­lar jobs and com­pe­ten­cies.

“We must work to­ward the clo­sure of the gap based on what the mar­ket showed us, we ex­pect that giv­en cir­cum­stances we may not get 100 per cent clo­sure as much as we would like to, so we would want it as close as pos­si­ble to that 100 per cent,” she said.

On Mon­day, Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) pres­i­dent, act­ing As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice Gideon Dick­son, said they have two weeks to re­spond to the CPO’s four per cent of­fer. He said in that time, they will meet with their mem­ber­ship and with their con­sul­tant to crunch fig­ures.

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