Raphael John-Lall

There were con­flict­ing re­ports yes­ter­day be­tween the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) and the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) as to how many TSTT em­ploy­ees were sus­pend­ed. Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence held yes­ter­day at the union's Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice, Joseph Re­my, pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the CWU, said TSTT had sus­pend­ed 100 work­ers.

That fig­ure con­flict­ed with the one giv­en by Camille Sa­landy, head of com­mu­ni­ca­tions at TSTT, who said "no more than 75 work­ers" were giv­en let­ters of sus­pen­sion with full pay. Re­my said the work­ers have been sus­pend­ed pend­ing the out­come of fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to Tues­day's in­ci­dent at TSTT's of­fice on Ed­ward Street, Port-of-Spain. Mem­bers of the CWU was at­tempt­ing to de­liv­er a pe­ti­tion to TSTT's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Rober­to Pe­on and a phys­i­cal strug­gle broke out be­tween some of its mem­bers and the se­cu­ri­ty guards.

Re­my claimed TSTT's man­age­ment was try­ing to ter­mi­nate the em­ploy­ment of these work­ers. "Ef­fec­tive­ly they have dis­missed every­body. That's what they are telling you. When they tell you, you on sus­pen­sion pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. They have in­di­cat­ed their in­ten­tion is to dis­miss every­body," Re­my said. Re­my read parts of the let­ter which was served on the em­ploy­ees and which stat­ed "three mem­bers of the se­cu­ri­ty de­tail were as­sault­ed by mem­bers of staff." Re­my dis­missed the claims of the let­ter say­ing no mem­ber of the union as­sault­ed the se­cu­ri­ty guards at TSTT's head of­fice and in fact it was the oth­er way around.

"When the sec­re­tary gen­er­al, John Julien went through the scan­ner he was ac­cost­ed by a se­cu­ri­ty guard and pushed away and that was when the fra­cas start­ed. "The sec­re­tary gen­er­al has since filed a re­port with the po­lice with re­spect to an al­leged as­sault com­mit­ted by an Amal­ga­mat­ed se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer," Re­my said. He added now that so many work­ers had been sus­pend­ed, the union can­not guar­an­tee that TSTT would be pro­vid­ing ef­fec­tive ser­vices to the coun­try. Re­my al­so said it was ex­pect­ed that crim­i­nal charges would be laid against some of CWU's ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers. "We have been ad­vised that they are pur­su­ing crim­i­nal charges against me, the sec­re­tary gen­er­al and ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer," Re­my said.

TSTT re­sponds

Head of com­mu­ni­ca­tions at TSTT Camille Sa­landy con­firmed that em­ploy­ees were served let­ters of sus­pen­sion yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, she said, "No more than 75 work­ers" were giv­en let­ters of sus­pen­sion with full pay. Sa­landy said at this time TSTT could not say how long the in­ves­ti­ga­tion would last but even­tu­al­ly "the truth will come out of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion."