One day af­ter it was an­nounced that Kent West­ern re­signed as TSTT’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Gov­ern­ment is deny­ing claims of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

Yes­ter­day, the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU) ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of hav­ing a role to play in West­ern’s de­ci­sion to step down.

Two weeks pri­or, the union said it had in­for­ma­tion that the then Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go CEO was set to be re­placed. At the time, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath said there was no truth to the union’s claims.

But now, the union is shout­ing “I told you so”, as it be­lieves the res­ig­na­tion was not West­ern’s choice.

Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence held at its head of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, CWU’s Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer said the union was now con­cerned that oth­er peo­ple at TSTT sus­pect­ed of be­ing af­fil­i­at­ed with the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment may be next to lose their jobs: “If you’re a PNM, you’re not safe.”

Ogeer said, “When we saw the re­lease from TSTT yes­ter­day (Mon­day), it wasn’t a sur­prise. We knew it was com­ing ... be­cause that is the Gov­ern­ment’s agen­da. If you are not po­lit­i­cal­ly as­signed to a cer­tain par­ty, then your goose cook.

“And the sad re­al­i­ty about it is, what is the Gov­ern­ment ac­tu­al­ly telling peo­ple now? You could go to school, have a good ed­u­ca­tion, come out there and work, but as soon as you reach in these hi­er­ar­chy po­si­tions, if you are not par­tic­u­lar­ly aligned to a cer­tain gov­ern­ment, it begs the ques­tion, What hap­pens?

“So ac­tu­al­ly, in­stead of ac­tu­al­ly fir­ing him (West­ern), like what would have hap­pened with WASA, be­cause if the union come out now and say it first, they (Gov­ern­ment) had to cir­cum­vent that ru­mour as it was placed then and ac­tu­al­ly give him a gold­en hand­shake. And now term it not as a fir­ing, but a res­ig­na­tion.”

Ogeer said the union was al­so con­cerned that strides made un­der West­ern, whom she de­scribed as the “em­ploy­ees’ CEO”, may be dis­rupt­ed by the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al shift.

She said em­ploy­ees are sad and con­cerned about their job se­cu­ri­ty as well.

“So what hap­pened is I got a few calls this morn­ing (Tues­day), and per­sons were say­ing they’re not even in­ter­est­ed to come to work be­cause some­times, if they have a lit­tle con­cern, they would write the CEO, and the CEO would write them, and he would send lit­tle up­lift­ing mes­sages and so forth. We have nev­er seen that type of re­la­tion­ship. He’s a CEO that comes down to the ground. He’s not an of­fice CEO.”

Hit­ting back, both Padarath and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and for­mer CWU head Clyde El­der de­nied the union’s claims of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

Padarath said he was in­formed West­ern want­ed to move on to “green­er pas­tures”.

He said he’s nev­er even met the new act­ing CEO Keino Cox.

“There has been no po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence that I am aware of with re­spect to Mr West­ern’s de­par­ture from TSTT. I have not had any con­ver­sa­tion with Mr West­ern re­gard­ing his de­par­ture. I was ad­vised by the board that it was a mu­tu­al de­ci­sion, that he want­ed to move on to green­er pas­tures, as he put it.”

The min­is­ter al­so ac­cused CWU of at­tempt­ing to cause pan­ic among work­ers. He said there’s no plan to dis­miss work­ers.

“I think that is a case of cre­at­ing hys­te­ria among em­ploy­ees. There’s a new board of man­age­ment. I spoke to the chair­man (Kern Dass) up to a short while ago. There have been no over­tures by the board to go down the road of dis­miss­ing em­ploy­ees and so on. There’s ob­vi­ous­ly a dif­fer­ent man­age­ment style in terms of how we in­tend on op­er­at­ing the com­pa­ny to make it more pro­duc­tive and more prof­itable. How­ev­er, at this stage, there is no dis­cus­sion with re­spect to dis­plac­ing em­ploy­ees and so on at TSTT.”

Padarath said he was open to di­a­logue with the CWU. Ogeer al­so ex­pressed a will­ing­ness to meet with the min­is­ter.