For over a decade, the Com­mit­tee of Con­cerned Pen­sion­ers of TEL­CO/ TSTT, rep­re­sent­ing more than 1,500 re­tirees, has been ad­vo­cat­ing for eq­ui­table pen­sion in­creas­es.

De­spite their ef­forts, in­clud­ing protests and let­ters to the Prime Min­is­ter, they have yet to re­ceive, what they con­sid­er to be a sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sponse from the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.

Com­mit­tee mem­ber Ian Clarke said that many pen­sion­ers, now in their 70s and 80s, have been cam­paign­ing for in­creased pen­sions for the past 10 to 14 years.

In 2022, the com­mit­tee wrote to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, de­tail­ing the pen­sion fund sur­plus­es and their griev­ances.

While the Prime Min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged the let­ter and re­ferred the mat­ter to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, Clarke said there has been no re­sponse from him to date.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, three years af­ter our 2022 let­ter to the Prime Min­is­ter, we have re­ceived no re­sponse from Mr Gon­za­les—not even an ac­knowl­edge­ment of our re­quest to dis­cuss our is­sues," he said.

The pen­sion­ers have protest­ed out­side TSTT’s head of­fice on Ed­ward Street, in Port-of-Spain.

De­spite their per­sis­tence, pen­sion­ers claimed they have faced con­tin­ued re­sis­tance from the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go's ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment.

The pen­sion­ers ex­plained they are up­set that some re­tirees re­ceive month­ly pen­sions as low as $1,295, with no in­creas­es since 2009. This they said is de­spite the ac­tu­ar­i­al val­u­a­tions as of March 31, 2021 showed a sur­plus of $828 mil­lion in the TEL­CO plan and $356 mil­lion in the TSTT plan.

Clarke claimed that the TSTT pen­sion plan has a sur­plus of close to $1 bil­lion, as con­firmed by the ac­tu­ar­i­al firm Ba­con, Woodrow & D'Souza.

The ac­tu­ar­ies clas­si­fied this as a “dis­pos­able sur­plus,” mean­ing it could be al­lo­cat­ed to in­crease pen­sions with­out jeop­ar­diz­ing the fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty of the fund.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, how­ev­er, calls went unan­swered.