Ra­mona Ram­di­al

The T&T Uni­tied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) and all of its 14,000 mem­bers are “PNM.” Why? In April 2025, the then TTUTA pres­i­dent and his ex­ec­u­tive signed for a five per cent salary in­crease for the 2020-2023 pe­ri­od with the then PNM gov­ern­ment. Days lat­er, that gov­ern­ment was vot­ed out, and then in Oc­to­ber, that TTUTA ad­min­is­tra­tion was al­so vot­ed out. So, TTUTA is “PNM,” ent?

Dur­ing the 2025/2026 Bud­get de­bate, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Michael Dowlath in­di­cat­ed that a par­tic­u­lar “$903 mil­lion” in­crease was for teach­ers’ “back­pay ar­rears, the 5%.” Cal­en­dar 2025 end­ed, and then Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo told the me­dia that the back­pay would be paid “with­in the first quar­ter of cal­en­dar 2026, which is now (March).” I am in­formed that the back­pay cal­cu­la­tions have been au­dit­ed for re­lease.

How­ev­er, dur­ing the mid-year re­view, Min­is­ter Tan­coo said that “re­lief is com­ing” in “fis­cal 2027.” Nurs­es and oth­ers at the bar­gain­ing ta­ble were of­fered that car­rot as well. The dif­fer­ence is that TTUTA signed 14 months ago!

I per­son­al­ly thought that they should have held out for the ten per cent of­fered by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. Re­gard­less, it is good for our Gov­ern­ment’s cof­fers that they got low-balled by the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion. Now, they are be­ing strung out by the cur­rent one. I was a teacher, and I don’t eas­i­ly con­cede my af­fil­i­a­tions. I hope that my for­mer col­leagues will stop get­ting licks, soon!

The Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union and all of its 11,000 mem­bers are “UNC.” Why? They are cel­e­brat­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s restora­tion of their suc­ces­sor rights, which bind Petrotrin’s cor­po­rate suc­ces­sors to its pre­vi­ous agree­ments with the union. I al­ways won­dered if OW­TU leader An­cel Ro­get ever apol­o­gised for wag­ing war on the UNC, quite mem­o­rably when he dragged PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s man­nequin ef­fi­gy, and when he walked arm in arm with Dr Kei­th Row­ley to get us vot­ed out in 2015. Mr Ro­get prob­a­bly didn’t mean that then, though. He’s prob­a­bly “UNC for life” now!

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie al­so took a long, wind­ing path be­fore pop­ping up in a UNC cab­i­net. In­ter­est­ing­ly, the for­mer long-time trea­sur­er of the PNM, An­dre Mon­teil, es­caped mil­lions of dol­lars in civ­il li­a­bil­i­ties when for­mer PNM AG Je­re­mie re­cent­ly an­nounced the state’s with­draw­al from civ­il lit­i­ga­tion re­gard­ing the col­lapse of CLF and its sub­sidiaries.

In 2007, the Mustill tri­bunal was con­vened to de­ter­mine if then Chief Jus­tice Sat Shar­ma was to be im­peached for al­leged­ly pres­sur­ing then Chief Mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc­Ni­colls to ac­quit for­mer PM Bas­deo Pan­day dur­ing his 2006 in­tegri­ty tri­al. At around this time, then Chief Mag­is­trate Mc­Ni­colls was in some fi­nan­cial dis­tress, af­ter he pur­chased a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar prop­er­ty at Mil­len­ni­um Park from HCL.

Dur­ing then CJ Shar­ma’s tes­ti­mo­ny, he as­sert­ed that then PNM AG Je­re­mie had ac­tive­ly used his ex­ec­u­tive in­flu­ence to re­solve then Chief Mag­is­trate Mc­Ni­coll’s mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar land woes. Shar­ma stat­ed that Je­re­mie co­or­di­nat­ed with the then PNM trea­sur­er and CL Fi­nan­cial ex­ec­u­tive An­dre Mon­teil to fast-track HCL’s re-pur­chase of the prop­er­ty. He con­tend­ed that the then Chief Mag­is­trate was be­hold­en to the then (and cur­rent) At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. It was al­leged that this was a means of con­vict­ing UNC founder Pan­day and re­mov­ing then CJ Shar­ma.

Why did the then PNM AG Je­re­mie de­cline the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­tri­cate him­self from these al­le­ga­tions at the tri­bunal? Is there still a re­la­tion­ship be­tween AG Je­re­mie and Mr Mon­teil? I ask these ques­tions be­cause Fla­vorite Ice Cream Com­pa­ny Ltd seems to have evad­ed a $2 mil­lion T&TEC bill. Was Fla­vorite owned by Stone Street Cap­i­tal Ltd, which is owned by Mon­teil, who pos­si­bly es­caped hav­ing to pay over $100 mil­lion due to AG Je­re­mie’s an­nounce­ment of the State’s with­draw­al from lit­i­ga­tion in­to the CLF col­lapse?

It would be great if Fla­vorite pays their light bill, but if giv­en an op­tion, I’d pre­fer the State to get $100 mil­lion.

Mean­while, the Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness, Bar­ry Padarath, de­tect­ed Par­lia­ment staff’s mut­ing of the mi­cro­phones of mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment bench dur­ing a sit­ting of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee. Did he cross the line when he walked up to take the pho­to of the par­lia­men­tary staff mem­ber whom he felt was do­ing the mut­ing? If he want­ed to iden­ti­fy the of­fend­ing in­di­vid­ual, he could have asked the Clerk of the House or even the Speak­er, who is re­spon­si­ble for all staff.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, the PSA made no state­ment on be­half of the pho­tographed Par­lia­men­tary Staff mem­ber.

Min­is­ter Padarath seems to be con­stant­ly “at war.” Per­haps he is au­di­tion­ing for even high­er of­fice, but he may al­so be over­whelmed and over­worked by the many fronts he is fight­ing. As such, it would be great for PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ap­point a deputy leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness to ease Min­is­ter Padarath’s bur­dens.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has called for the three Min­is­ters of Hous­ing and the chair­man of Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to be fired in light of HDC’s can­cel­la­tion of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion-probed $3.4 bil­lion house-build­ing con­tracts. This de­ci­sion would have fol­lowed the HDC’s own as­sess­ment of the is­sues. Is the HDC board ca­pa­ble of build­ing af­ford­able homes for the cit­i­zen­ry while fol­low­ing all the prop­er pro­cure­ment pro­to­cols?

How could they have em­bar­rassed the Prime Min­is­ter and her Gov­ern­ment so ear­ly and es­cape “buss head?” Was it in­com­pe­tence, in­ex­pe­ri­ence and neg­li­gence? I would like this $3.4 bil­lion eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus to re­turn, but ful­ly com­pli­ant with pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion this time. Can the same board ac­tu­al­ly de­liv­er?