Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath has man­dat­ed the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) and its whol­ly owned sub­sidiary, Am­plia, to put a hold on all hu­man re­source ac­tions un­til fur­ther no­tice with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

This comes af­ter the board of TSTT re­fused to re­sign, Padarath said in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

An un­dat­ed in­ter­nal memo de­tailed that the di­rec­tives ap­plied across all cat­e­gories of em­ploy­ment - per­ma­nent, tem­po­rary, part-time, con­tract, con­sul­tan­cy and con­tin­gent work­ers. The memo was is­sued by TSTT CEO Kent West­ern and was ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia.

Specif­i­cal­ly, the memo in­di­cat­ed that TSTT is re­quired to sus­pend all of the fol­low­ing ac­tions with im­me­di­ate ef­fect:

• Trans­fers

• Re­cruit­ment

• Pro­mo­tions

• De­mo­tions

• Sep­a­ra­tions or ter­mi­na­tions

• Salary ad­just­ments

• Con­tract ex­ten­sions

“This ap­plies to both new ac­tions and any that are cur­rent­ly in process or pend­ing ap­proval. All such ac­tiv­i­ty is to be paused un­til for­mal guid­ance is pro­vid­ed. As an ex­am­ple, if you have a con­sul­tan­cy form that you were plan­ning to is­sue or re­turn to a po­ten­tial con­sul­tant to­day, please hold it un­til fur­ther no­tice,” the memo added.

In the memo, West­ern fur­ther di­rect­ed the rel­e­vant staff at the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny, to “please en­sure that this di­rec­tive is com­mu­ni­cat­ed and en­forced across your re­spec­tive teams and that in­ter­nal con­trols are in place across both TSTT and Am­plia to en­sure full com­pli­ance. I would ap­pre­ci­ate con­fir­ma­tion once this has been ac­tioned. Let me know if you need any clar­i­fi­ca­tion. Thank you in ad­vance for ac­knowl­edge­ment of re­ceipt.”

On what prompt­ed the move to put a hold on many of TSTT’s hu­man re­source func­tions, Padarath ex­plained that as is cus­tom­ary, usu­al­ly the board of di­rec­tors of any state en­ter­prise would of­fer their res­ig­na­tions af­ter a change in ad­min­is­tra­tion fol­low­ing a gen­er­al elec­tion.

“I am yet to re­ceive the res­ig­na­tions of the board of di­rec­tors that was in­sti­tut­ed by the last ad­min­is­tra­tion and, there­fore, I’ve been vis­it­ing all state en­ter­pris­es that fall un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Pub­lic Du­ties. So, TSTT was no dif­fer­ent,” Padarath said.

“I met with the CEO and staff at TSTT yes­ter­day (Mon­day) and I gave the di­rec­tive that—see­ing that there has been no res­ig­na­tion from the for­mer board that would have been ap­point­ed by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion—the board is to is­sue no in­struc­tion, com­pa­ny in­struc­tion from those who have re­fused to re­sign from those po­si­tions. So, un­til the new ad­min­is­tra­tion puts in place a board that will han­dle the day-to-day af­fairs in tan­dem with the man­age­ment of TSTT, it is on­ly right that such de­ci­sions tak­en at a board lev­el to be in­sti­tut­ed by the com­pa­ny be halt­ed at this time.”

Asked what he be­lieves may be the rea­son the board did not re­sign, the min­is­ter said this ought to be di­rect­ed to those who “re­fused to re­sign.”

Padarath said this was “not 100 per cent un­usu­al,” not­ing that he has re­ceived sev­er­al res­ig­na­tions, in­clud­ing those from the chairs of the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC), Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC).

The min­is­ter added that the board and di­rec­tors of TSTT seem “to be hold­ing on for one rea­son or the oth­er.”

“But there are ex­pressed pol­i­cy de­vi­a­tions from the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion com­pared to what this ad­min­is­tra­tion will be pur­su­ing and, there­fore, I could not in all good con­science al­low it to con­tin­ue, where there’s a di­rec­tive com­ing from a board that is not recog­nised by the in­com­ing gov­ern­ment, see­ing that there’s a de­vi­a­tion in terms of what our align­ments are in terms of pol­i­cy,” the min­is­ter added.

In a What­sApp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia, West­ern said, “As you are aware, there has been a change in ad­min­is­tra­tion, and we felt it pru­dent to pause any com­mit­ments, whether hu­man or fi­nan­cial, un­til we have greater clar­i­ty on our strate­gic di­rec­tion mov­ing for­ward.”

Ac­cord­ing to TSTT’s web­site, the com­pa­ny has a five-mem­ber board head­ed chair­man An­tho­ny Peyson and in­clud­ing An­ge­lo Austin, Wen­dell Berkley, An­nalean In­niss and Cavelle Joseph-St Omer.

Union wor­ried about ne­go­ti­a­tions Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) pres­i­dent Joanne Ogeer, who said the re­spon­si­ble thing to do by the board should have been to step aside or re­sign in­stead of hav­ing their ap­point­ments re­voked.

“... Right now at TSTT, the on­ly thing that is con­cern­ing for me is the halt on all the spend­ing. We have ne­go­ti­a­tions Fri­day (16th) and we would want to know if this halt would now im­pact the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od for ju­nior and se­nior staff,” Ogeer said.

She added that while this might be a re­spon­si­ble move by the Gov­ern­ment, it is al­so im­pact­ing neg­a­tive­ly on what could hap­pen in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the union and the com­pa­ny as it per­tained to col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing.

Ogeer added that the union “will wait and see” if the board would do the “ho­n­ourable thing and sub­mit their res­ig­na­tions.”

For­mer min­is­ter: Dan­ger­ous act

Mean­while, for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les is sound­ing the alarm over what he de­scribed as the pos­si­ble il­le­gal and dan­ger­ous po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in­to TSTT’s af­fairs.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day about Padarath’s in­struc­tions, Gon­za­les warned that any po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tive in­flu­enc­ing TSTT op­er­a­tions, es­pe­cial­ly in the ab­sence of a legal­ly con­sti­tut­ed board, un­der­mines good gov­er­nance and could set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent.

“Il­le­gal in­ter­fer­ence, po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence, by the new Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter or the Gov­ern­ment in­to the op­er­a­tions and ad­min­is­tra­tion of TSTT is, from my un­der­stand­ing, ex­treme­ly con­cern­ing. TSTT does not have a legal­ly con­sti­tut­ed board, and there­fore, any di­rec­tive of this na­ture com­ing from a po­lit­i­cal fig­ure is very dan­ger­ous. It is not good for cor­po­rate gov­er­nance,” Gon­za­les stat­ed.