Rapheal John-Lall

Gov­ern­ment has not yet tak­en a po­si­tion on the agree­ment by Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (CWC) to ac­quire Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al, Joseph Re­my, sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) said yes­ter­day."The Fi­nance Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment has not in­di­cat­ed a po­si­tion as yet. What he said is that the Gov­ern­ment is open to the union's ap­proach. He al­so has to meet with Ca­ble and Wire­less be­cause they want­ed to meet with him and he said it would be more pru­dent to meet with us and then them as he want­ed our views on pol­i­cy for­ma­tions," Re­my told the T&T Guardian fol­low­ing a meet­ing be­tween the union and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai.

CWC re­cent­ly en­tered in­to an agree­ment to ac­quire Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al Inc for US$1.85b. If com­plet­ed, the pur­chase will make CWC the Caribbean's largest whole­sale and re­tail broad­band ser­vice provider.Re­my, who de­scribed the meet­ing with Howai as "ex­plorato­ry," added: "It was called by the min­is­ter for us to out­line what our views are on this sit­u­a­tion with Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Colum­bus. We made it clear that we are deeply con­cerned about for­eign gov­er­nance of our telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion sec­tor which is what ex­ists now in essence. Dig­i­cel is owned by Den­nis O'Brien which is Irish. Ca­ble and Wire­less is owned by the Eng­lish."

He said the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion sec­tor is vi­tal for de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try and there must be strong lo­cal con­tent in it."The Gov­ern­ment should look to pur­chase the 49 per cent share­hold­ings in Ca­ble and Wire­less or some oth­er arrange­ment where cap­i­tal is avail­able and look at some struc­tured way where lo­cal in­vestors could buy in­to that share­hold­ings," Re­my said.