KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With 33 of 38 es­tate po­lice of­fi­cers at the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) ter­mi­nat­ed this week, the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) has sound­ed a warn­ing to mem­bers that the Gov­ern­ment’s pre­rog­a­tive is to pri­va­tise se­cu­ri­ty at State-owned com­pa­nies.

TSTT served re­trench­ment let­ters to 468 work­ers on Tues­day but the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) ob­tained a court in­junc­tion to stay the process for 376 work­ers the union rep­re­sents. The es­tate po­lice con­sta­bles are not rep­re­sent­ed by the CWU.

In a me­dia con­fer­ence at the EPA’s Mara­bel­la head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent Deryck Richard­son said with 300 mem­bers re­trenched at Petrotrin and 30 at Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed, he feared that the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) and Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) might be next.

Richard­son claimed that last year, TSTT en­gaged pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms to bid against each oth­er for a con­tract to pro­vide ser­vices. Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Ltd (ASSL), he said, won that bid at $24 per hour for the sup­ply of an of­fi­cer. How­ev­er, this raised con­cern for the EPA, as its agree­ment with ASSL was to pay an of­fi­cer $20 per hour.

“No com­pa­ny can sus­tain a con­tract pay­ing $24 an hour when you have to pay your of­fi­cers $20 an hour, plus the oth­er an­cil­lary and over­head costs, over­time in­clud­ed for pub­lic hol­i­days, na­tion­al in­sur­ance, uni­forms and trans­port,” Richard­son said.

It was then the EPA re­alised some­thing was amiss at TSTT, he said. The com­pa­ny sub­se­quent­ly wrote the EPA, call­ing for a meet­ing to dis­cuss the re­struc­tur­ing.

Richard­son ques­tioned whether ASSL knew about the re­struc­tur­ing when it of­fered a low bid in prepa­ra­tion for in­creased ser­vice to TSTT.

He said dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion by TSTT man­age­ment, they did not say how the re­struc­tur­ing would af­fect of­fi­cers.

In a sub­se­quent cor­re­spon­dence, how­ev­er, TSTT in­di­cat­ed that of­fi­cers would be sur­plus to the com­pa­ny’s pro­posed struc­ture.

“We asked the ques­tion then, who is go­ing to se­cure TSTT? What is the mod­el that you are go­ing to use? They went on to say that they would use elec­tron­ic se­cu­ri­ty.”

While the EPA agrees with us­ing elec­tron­ic se­cu­ri­ty, it asked TSTT who would re­spond to in­ci­dents. Richard­son said TSTT re­fused to name the com­pa­ny, on­ly say­ing that no one would re­place the of­fi­cers.

Dur­ing a pre­vi­ous re­trench­ment ex­er­cise in 2018, of­fi­cers did not ac­cept or re­quest an in­crease in salary dur­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions to save their jobs. Now, four years lat­er, the EPA asked that in light of the of­fi­cers’ 2018 sac­ri­fice, that TSTT con­sid­er an in­crease in sev­er­ance, but the com­pa­ny re­fused. It then sug­gest­ed a vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion pack­age and pro­vid­ed a pro­pos­al, but the com­pa­ny said it could not af­ford it.

Richard­son said TSTT told the na­tion that it con­sult­ed with the EPA and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union in good faith on the re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise, said but it lied. He said there was no will­ing­ness to con­sid­er the liv­ing sit­u­a­tions and debts of the of­fi­cers and it was all about re­plac­ing sus­tain­able jobs with cheap labour.

Richard­son again ques­tioned how ASSL was get­ting so many gov­ern­ment con­tracts, es­pe­cial­ly in en­ti­ties that had in-house se­cu­ri­ty. He said the com­pa­ny has of­fi­cers at TSTT, Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd, T&T Prison Ser­vice, Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion and Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny and was re­cruit­ing mem­bers to work at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

“We sound the alarm. Pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty has its role to play. We rep­re­sent peo­ple in pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty. If you have one com­pa­ny ba­si­cal­ly mo­nop­o­lis­ing State con­tracts, the ques­tion must be asked, is there one se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny on this is­land?” he asked.

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS