JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter-In­ves­tiga­tive

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

While Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is boast­ing of the Gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to pay close to a bil­lion dol­lars in back­pay ahead of Christ­mas Day to­day, hun­dreds of po­lice and fire of­fi­cers have not re­ceived theirs and may not get it un­til next year.

Tak­ing to the X plat­form yes­ter­day, Im­bert wrote, “Against all odds, we have so far paid ap­prox­i­mate­ly $900 mil­lion in back­pay to pub­lic of­fi­cers who ac­cept­ed our of­fer, and we con­tin­ue. It was a whole of gov­ern­ment ef­fort. All ac­count­ing staff in ed­u­ca­tion, fire, pris­ons and po­lice ser­vice and the many oth­ers who helped must be con­grat­u­lat­ed.”

Dur­ing his 2024 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion in Oc­to­ber, Im­bert promised a jol­ly Christ­mas for those who signed off on the CPO’s four per cent salary hike of­fer, not­ing they would re­ceive their monies be­fore Christ­mas.

In his $54.012 bil­lion bud­get, Im­bert promised to al­lo­cate $1 bil­lion to set­tling pub­lic ser­vants’ wage mat­ters by Christ­mas this year. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, unions who agreed to the State’s four per cent of­fer al­so re­ceived a $4000 tax-ex­empt lump sum pay­ment for re­tirees, which he said would cost the State an ad­di­tion­al $19 mil­lion.

Soon af­ter­wards, the then Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion per­ma­nent sec­re­tary wrote to Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, in­form­ing her pay­ments for teach­ers could not be processed be­fore May 2024. That of­fi­cial was lat­er trans­ferred from the min­istry.

In re­as­sur­ing the teach­ers in Oc­to­ber, Im­bert told Par­lia­ment that the Gov­ern­ment “will do what has to be done” to en­sure pay­ments are made.

The unions to ben­e­fit in­clud­ed the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), Fire Ser­vice, Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers’ Union (AWU), T&T Po­lice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­SWA), Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) and the T&T De­fence Force.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, TTUTA sec­ond vice pres­i­dent Mar­sha Hug­gins said most of the teach­ers re­ceived their back­pay. How­ev­er, she said there are about 10 per cent of teach­ers who are ex­pect­ed to re­ceive it be­fore the new year.

Hug­gins said it was no fault of the ac­count­ing de­part­ment, not­ing the chal­lenges stemmed from cal­cu­lat­ing the changes in grades for some teach­ers who were pro­mot­ed, those on ex­tend­ed sick leave and oth­er is­sues. She said she knew staff at the min­istry were work­ing “round d clock” to fa­cil­i­tate the pay­ments be­fore Christ­mas.

Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Keone Guy al­so said de­spite the hard work of the ac­count­ing de­part­ment, some 289 reg­u­lar fire of­fi­cers of a catch­ment of 2,300 re­ceived their salaries with­out back­pay, ow­ing to some in­di­vid­ual hic­cups in pro­cess­ing theirs. Guy added that those of­fi­cers will be paid their back­pay in Jan­u­ary.

Guy said it is hoped that some 300 aux­il­iary of­fi­cers will al­so be paid both their De­cem­ber salaries and back­pay by the end of the year.

De­scrib­ing them as the “back­bone” of the Fire Ser­vice, Guy said the aux­il­iary of­fi­cers were placed on the “back burn­er” as the ac­counts de­part­ment, on in­struc­tions, did what was nec­es­sary to en­sure that the reg­u­lar fire of­fi­cers re­ceived their monies on time.

“We are hop­ing that they are paid by the 27 or 28. They will be paid af­ter Christ­mas, which may be a good thing as they will not suf­fer from buy­er’s re­morse. But I don’t think that the de­ci­sion should have been made for them.”

He ex­plained that the aux­il­iary of­fi­cers are on a dif­fer­ent pay­ment sys­tem, as reg­u­lar fire of­fi­cers are on the Gov­ern­ment’s IBIS au­to­mat­ic sys­tem while the aux­il­iary of­fi­cers are still man­u­al­ly com­put­ed.

Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers’ Union (AMU) pres­i­dent Michael Pren­tice said his mem­ber­ship re­ceived their back­pay long be­fore the Oc­to­ber read­ing of the bud­get. This, he said, was a ben­e­fit of be­ing one of the first unions to ac­cept the of­fer back in Au­gust. The on­ly hic­cup he and his union of 1,400 mem­bers had about 17 work­ers falling out­side of the pay­ment pe­ri­od and re­ceiv­ing their monies af­ter the Oc­to­ber 2 read­ing of the bud­get.

Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, ASP Gideon Dick­son, told Guardian Me­dia most of the 7,000-plus po­lice of­fi­cers and 70 per cent of Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cers re­ceived their pay­ments, while the bulk of the reg­u­lar po­lice of­fi­cers were await­ing pay­ments.

“About 30 per cent of reg­u­lar po­lice of­fi­cers re­ceived their back­pay. We have a team work­ing on it and it should be ready with the Jan­u­ary salary. Our process­es would have failed us, and we will be ad­dress­ing that go­ing for­ward,” Dick­son said.

Dick­son blamed the de­lay on “new peo­ple at the helm.” Asked to clar­i­fy, he said since the last pe­ri­od of back­pay paid in 2015, there have been new peo­ple, both civil­ians and po­lice of­fi­cers in charge of the ac­count­ing, which he sus­pect­ed led to the de­lays. He added that the var­i­ous units and the fact that po­lice have over 26 al­lowances con­tributed to the de­lay as well.