Rapheal John-Lall

Most of the US$5 bil­lion earned an­nu­al­ly by the re­gion's telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion sec­tor is tak­en away by for­eign multi­na­tion­als, Joseph Re­my, sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers' Union (CWU), said yes­ter­day.

He said that was one of the rea­soons why the union was strong­ly op­posed to the ac­qui­si­tion of Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al by Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (CWC ) since that may re­sult in more prof­its be­ing tak­en away from T&T and the Caribbean.

"In this sce­nario where Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions is seek­ing reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval for merg­ing their op­er­a­tions with Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, we must ask whether this is a good pol­i­cy.

"The da­ta re­veals that the ma­jor ben­e­fi­cia­ries from the rev­enues gen­er­at­ed from the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion sec­tor are the for­eign multi­na­tion­als, name­ly Ca­ble and Wire­less, Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Dig­i­cel.

"An av­er­age of 80 per cent of the re­turns de­rived from the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion sec­tor are repa­tri­at­ed out of the re­gion," he said at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the CWU's of­fice, Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain.

Last No­vem­ber, Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions en­tered in­to an agree­ment to ac­quire Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al Inc for US$1.85 bil­lion.

Op­po­nents to the pro­posed ac­qui­si­tion claim it will give CWC a vir­tu­al mo­nop­oly in lo­cal and re­gion­al mar­kets.

Re­my said telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions was one of the key sec­tors to bring about eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion but it must be done in a way that ben­e­fits the coun­try.

"A well struc­tured and prop­er­ly reg­u­lat­ed telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor in T&T can ac­crue tremen­dous ben­e­fits to the coun­try by pro­vid­ing ac­cess to mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tions for lo­cal busi­ness­es to op­er­ate more com­pet­i­tive­ly, by fa­cil­i­tat­ing mod­ern forms of work­ing and by pro­vid­ing a back­bone for sus­tain­able ben­e­fits," he said.

He al­so said CWC's ac­qui­si­tion of Colum­bus would be a "con­flict of in­ter­est" since the com­pa­ny would have con­trol of the op­er­a­tions of Flow.

"This would mean that Ca­ble and Wire­less would have the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­ing in a sig­nif­i­cant share­hold­ing in­ter­est, TSTT. This is a open and fla­grant case of con­flict of in­ter­est and can al­so in­fringe on an­ti trust reg­u­la­tions. How can Ca­ble and Wire­less be al­lowed to com­pete with it­self?" Re­my asked.

Re­my said CWU was de­mand­ing that Gov­ern­ment re­ject the re­quest by CWC for reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval of the ac­qui­si­tion be­cause it would not serve the in­ter­est of T&T and will have se­ri­ous neg­a­tive im­pli­ca­tions for the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion sec­tor", Re­my said

He said the CWU planned to step up ac­tion to sen­si­tise the pop­u­la­tion about what was tak­ing place.

"Our Car­ni­val now start. We in­tend to start cam­paig­ing and in­form­ing the peo­ple about how this Ca­ble and Wire­less deal could hurt the coun­try," he said.