KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Al­most eight months af­ter the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) was hit with a ran­somware at­tack which led to the breach of thou­sands of cus­tomers’ per­son­al da­ta in­clud­ing that of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the com­pa­ny is yet to re­lease a re­port on the at­tack.

While the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union (CWU) has com­plained about the wait time, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les does not be­lieve the process should be rushed.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said, “I haven’t re­ceived the re­port as yet. You can’t give a dead­line in these types of mat­ters. It’s an in­ves­ti­ga­tion that may have se­ri­ous le­gal reper­cus­sions if not man­aged in a del­i­cate man­ner.”

Short­ly af­ter the cy­ber­at­tack, which oc­curred on Oc­to­ber 9 last year, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Lisa Agard was re­moved.

The term of TSTT’s board of di­rec­tors ex­pired on March 14, and a new board was in­sti­tut­ed on April 29. It com­pris­es re­turn­ing chair­man Sean Roach along with di­rec­tors An­ge­lo Austin, Wen­dell Berkley, An­nalean In­niss, Cavelle Joseph-St Omer and An­tho­ny Peyson.

How­ev­er, the CWU re­mains con­cerned about the com­pa­ny’s de­lay in sub­mit­ting the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) re­port, as they are de­mand­ing the pub­lic be told the truth.

The CWU told Guardian Me­dia, “The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union is very con­cerned about the de­lay in sub­mit­ting the re­port of the cy­ber in­cur­sion at TSTT from the JSC. One rea­son prof­fered by the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties con­cern­ing the de­lay was due to not hav­ing a BOD in place at the state en­ti­ty. On or around April 29th, 2024 the com­pa­ny in­formed its em­ploy­ees of the new six-mem­ber BOD in­clud­ing Mr. Sean Roach re­turn­ing as Chair­man. No­tably, to date we are yet to hear about this de­ba­cle which erod­ed trust with our val­ued in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal cus­tomers at large.”

“The cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go need to know the truth and there must be trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty. It is the view of the CWU that any re­port which touch­es and con­cerns TSTT seems to be in abeyance, the CWU is still await­ing the foren­sic au­dit re­port from Min­istry of Fi­nance more than two years, al­so the “not-so-deep dive” fit for pur­pose re­port on TSTT from the sub-com­mit­tee of par­lia­ment which the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties is a mem­ber of, and now this cy­ber in­cur­sion re­port. If there is a board of di­rec­tors in place since April 24 then what is the rea­son for the de­lay?

“The union is call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties who on­ly seems to be tak­ing in­to ac­count the op­er­a­tions of one util­i­ty (WASA) and has failed/re­fused to look in­to TSTT, a com­pa­ny which is plum­met­ing due to the in­abil­i­ty to churn new emerg­ing ser­vices and to en­sure busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity and a lu­cra­tive en­ti­ty. The union con­tends that there has to be a plan afoot to have TSTT be­come un­prof­itable, and sell it off cheap to some­one lined up, who knows maybe Massy!”

The Oc­to­ber 9 breach is not the first time the com­pa­ny has been tar­get­ed by bad ac­tors. In March 2023, TSTT was al­so the tar­get of a mal­ware in­cur­sion that at­tempt­ed to ac­cess the com­pa­ny’s sys­tems.