Raphael John-Lall

Joseph Re­my, pres­i­dent, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers' Union (CWU) is call­ing on the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) to pub­lish its fi­nan­cial state­ment for fi­nan­cial year 2012 to 2013.

"This is the first time that TSTT has failed to pub­lished the stip­u­lat­ed state­ment with­in the stip­u­lat­ed time. As of this date, no copy of the fi­nan­cial state­ment has been pro­vid­ed for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed March 31, 2013. We have not even been pro­vid­ed with an ex­pla­na­tion as to why those fi­nan­cial state­ments have not been pub­lished," he said.

TSTT fi­nan­cial year runs from April 1 to March 31 and the com­pa­ny is re­quired to pub­lish its an­nu­al au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment three months af­ter the end of its fi­nan­cial year, Re­my said.He was speak­ing yes­ter­day at a press con­fer­ence at the CWU Of­fice, Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain.

"We are call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance as the per­son with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL) and Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties who has re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for the op­er­a­tional as­pects of TSTT what is the ba­sis and the rea­son for TSTT's fail­ure to have their au­dit­ed, fi­nan­cial state­ment pub­lished con­sis­tent with the laws of the lands," he said.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued on the T&T Stock Ex­change web­site on Ju­ly 12, NEL in­formed the Stock Ex­change that it was un­able to file its 2012 au­dit­ed con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments as re­quired with­in the time­frame pre­scribed un­der the Se­cu­ri­ties Act, 2012 due to cir­cum­stances be­yond the com­pa­ny's con­trol.

"Con­se­quent­ly, NEL has been un­able to date to com­plete its 2012 au­dit­ed con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments be­cause per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion from TSTT's 2012 au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments must be in­cor­po­rat­ed and/or con­sol­i­dat­ed in­to NEL's 2012 au­dit­ed con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments and NEL's au­di­tors PKF ad­vised they could not sign off on its fi­nan­cials with­out TSTT au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials."

Re­my be­lieves that TSTT 's fail­ure to pro­duce au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults for the last fi­nan­cial year has to do with the res­o­lu­tion of wage ne­go­ti­a­tions at the In­dus­tri­al Court.

"The com­pa­ny's ra­tio­nale for their ridicu­lous three per­cent pro­pos­al for the ju­nior and se­nior staff bar­gain­ing unit is on the ba­sis of their poor fi­nan­cial per­for­mance. They want to stall the pub­li­ca­tions of those fi­nan­cials be­cause from all ap­pear­ances it has been im­proved over the last year. We want the com­pa­ny to re­veal the truth about the true fi­nan­cial state­ment," he said.

He al­so spoke about a rift on TSTT's board on which there are five lo­cals, rep­re­sent­ing the State, which owns 51 per cent of TSTT, and four di­rec­tors who rep­re­sent Ca­ble & Wire­less, which owns 49 per cent of TSTT. Re­my claimed that the Ca­ble & Wire­less di­rec­tors had ve­to pow­er.

"The four for­eign­ers hold the key with re­spect to fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion. That is a trav­es­ty. We want the Gov­ern­ment to launch in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the cur­rent board with re­gard to some of the prac­tices. We have been in­formed that most of the board meet­ings have been held in Lon­don, there was even a re­treat there," he said.He said "height­ened ac­tion" will be tak­en over the next few weeks if noth­ing is done to ad­dress these is­sues.

"Ca­ble & Wire­less is mak­ing ef­forts to have this com­pa­ny wrest­ed in­to the hands of this British multi­na­tion­al. We are say­ing TSTT is sup­posed to re­main a na­tion­al en­ter­prise rep­re­sent­ing na­tion­als," he said.Acord­ing to the T&T Stock Ex­change, NEL's sole rev­enue gen­er­at­ing as­sets are the shares in its in­vestee com­pa­nies.

"In or­der to com­pile the cap­tioned state­ments, NEL re­quires the 2012 au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments, with ap­pro­pri­ate notes, of the TSTT, one of its in­vestee com­pa­nies. TSTT has not, to date, signed off on its 2012 au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments in­clu­sive of the ap­pro­pri­ate and ap­plic­a­ble notes there­to. While the au­di­tors have com­plet­ed their au­dit, TSTT Au­dit Com­mit­tee and Board has not signed off on the 2012 fi­nan­cials. NEL ex­pects this to be done be­fore the end of the cur­rent month."

How­ev­er, NEL pub­lished its 2012 Unau­dit­ed Un­con­sol­i­dat­ed Fi­nan­cial State­ments on June 30, 2013 which it has stat­ed that, while unau­dit­ed, rep­re­sents a true pic­ture of the com­pa­ny's un­con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cials bar­ring any changes TSTT may make in its fi­nal au­dit­ed ac­counts.

Up­on com­ple­tion of the com­pa­ny's 2012 au­dit­ed con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments, NEL will pub­lish these as re­quired by the Act. NEL ex­pect­ed that it would have been in a po­si­tion to pub­lish its au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments be­fore the end of Ju­ly 2013.