Amidst tu­mul­tuous and un­cer­tain times at the T&T Ra­dio Net­work (TTRN), work­ers feel as if they have been aban­doned by their boss. They fear that the em­ploy­ees will now have to pay for what they claim is man­age­ment’s neg­li­gence and poor de­ci­sion-mak­ing. 

At a staff meet­ing last Wednes­day, An­tho­ny “Chi­nese Laun­dry” Chow Lin On re­vealed to work­ers that the com­pa­ny’s ac­counts have been seized by the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR). The staff was al­so grim­ly ad­vised to “plan for the worst but hope for the best.” 

TTRN is the par­ent com­pa­ny of ra­dio sta­tions 96.1 WEFM, STAR 94.7, and 107.7 Mu­sic for Life. Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that Chow Lin On owes the BIR $34 mil­lion in un­paid tax­es, ex­clu­sive of in­ter­est on the debt for the 2015–2024 pe­ri­od. Over 80 peo­ple are em­ployed at the com­pa­ny. 

Guardian Me­dia pro­cured an au­dio record­ing of Chow Lin On’s staff meet­ing, where he pur­port­ed­ly said, “I was think­ing, is this the tough­est mo­ment I’ve ever faced in my life? And I’m say­ing, maybe it is.” 

De­spite as­sur­ing staff that mea­sures will be tak­en in the com­ing weeks to en­sure they “nev­er let OJO fall,” man­age­ment did in­form those in at­ten­dance that, “we are head­ing in­to a storm right now; plan for the worst and hope for the best. I don’t want to colour any­thing for you. We need every­body on board.” 

How­ev­er, one work­er said loy­al­ty was con­tin­gent on their salaries. 

“I think one of the main ques­tions this month end here is: What is go­ing on with salaries? Be­cause two or three peo­ple here may be able to with­stand the storm and stay on that boat, but there are peo­ple in­side here with­out a salary this month end, they will be off the boat,” the em­ploy­ee posit­ed. 

He was told that “there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty it may be late, but rest as­sured that it will be tak­en care of. It may be late, but it’s com­ing.” 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that last month’s salary was al­so late. 

Staff mem­bers were told that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, a 50 per cent de­cline in ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enues, and out­stand­ing pay­ments owed by clients con­tributed to the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial hard­ships. 

Chow Lin On had re­port­ed­ly told work­ers he knows there was anx­i­ety about job se­cu­ri­ty, but their on-air prod­uct must re­main strong as they sought to steady the ship. 

But some staff mem­bers, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said they do not be­lieve there is a strate­gic plan in place to save the com­pa­ny. In fact, they crit­i­cised Chow Lin On leav­ing the coun­try soon af­ter. 

One work­er said, “Per­son­al­ly, I feel like this is aban­don­ment. The ship is sink­ing, and you are run­ning away.” 

They said oth­er em­ploy­ees were not ac­cept­ing the COVID-19 ex­cuse. 

“Don’t tell me this is just COVID. Be­cause in 2015, there was no COVID. You’ve been do­ing this for a while, hop­ing not to get caught, and now that you’ve got­ten caught, do you want us to ab­sorb the costs? That’s un­fair. So, if you’re look­ing at the gen­er­al view of the em­ploy­ees, it is lit­er­al­ly that this is so un­fair be­cause this is go­ing to come out of our pock­ets. And every time you (Chow Lin On) make cuts, you tell us you are go­ing to make it up to us, and you nev­er do.” 

Work­ers claimed that man­agers were at­tempt­ing to as­suage con­cerns, say­ing me­dia re­ports had been ex­ag­ger­at­ed and Chow Lin On would find a so­lu­tion. 

In the staff meet­ing, the work­ers were in­formed that cuts had to be made and the com­pa­ny’s se­cu­ri­ty ex­pens­es were un­der con­sid­er­a­tion. 

But an­oth­er work­er said some staff mem­bers were be­ing pri­vate­ly in­formed that pay cuts were com­ing. 

“He called in 107.7 FM staff, ask­ing them if they will take the pay cut. And so far, one per­son said ab­solute­ly not be­cause they have chil­dren to take care of, and he (Tony) said OK, but I will need you all to still help me out,” the staff mem­ber in­formed. 

An­oth­er em­ploy­ee ex­pressed alarm over the de­ci­sion to cut back on se­cu­ri­ty ex­pens­es. 

“We have Amal­ga­mat­ed now, and that is 24-hour se­cu­ri­ty, and he has de­cid­ed we no longer need 24-hour se­cu­ri­ty and that we can just put a fin­ger­print sys­tem out­side to get in­to the build­ing. In 2024 when the coun­try is like this, and you are on Tra­garete Road?” they asked in­cred­u­lous­ly.  

Guardian Me­dia was al­so pro­vid­ed with a doc­u­ment dat­ed Jan­u­ary 2, 2024, where con­cerned em­ploy­ees ex­pressed to man­age­ment that, “It is ex­treme­ly ap­par­ent we are not do­ing any team build­ing, trust build­ing, pol­i­cy evo­lu­tion, or re­pair­ing of our lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that would fa­cil­i­tate the gen­er­al re­cov­ery of OJO as a cre­ative and in­no­v­a­tive leader with­in the na­tion­al land­scape. To con­tin­ue on this path will be to the emo­tion­al, men­tal, and fi­nan­cial detri­ment of every­one in­volved and the OJO lega­cy.” 

Guardian Me­dia again at­tempt­ed to speak with Chow Lin On, how­ev­er, he did not re­spond to our mes­sages.