Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) ex­ec­u­tive are re­main­ing silent on the sus­pen­sion of two se­nior ex­ec­u­tives on Mon­day and Tues­day.

They al­so side­stepped ques­tions about the fra­cas that broke out at TSTT's main of­fice on Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union head Clyde El­der was re­port­ed­ly speak­ing to unionised staff when he was forcibly re­moved from the com­pound. El­der said he was deal­ing with work­ers’ griev­ances when the in­ci­dent hap­pened.

El­der was tak­en by am­bu­lance to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for med­ical ex­am­i­na­tion af­ter he said he was "roughed up" by the guard who threw him out of the TSTT of­fice.

The Guardian Me­dia sent re­quests for in­for­ma­tion to TSTT CEO Ronald Wal­cott but he di­rect­ed all ques­tions to head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions Mar­sha Ca­ballero. She did not re­spond to ques­tions asked on Tues­day or Wednes­day.

De­spite their si­lence, Guardian Me­dia learned that the two se­nior women were re­moved from the com­pound and sus­pend­ed. One was re­moved from the Au­dit­ing De­part­ment on Mon­day and the oth­er from the Fi­nance De­part­ment on Tues­day.

The move was made be­cause the com­pa­ny be­lieved that the two were in­volved in the leak­ing of con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion to the me­dia about the op­er­a­tions at TSTT, specif­i­cal­ly the com­pa­ny's de­ci­sion to hire an ex­ter­nal com­pa­ny to pro­vide sup­port for the Ac­counts Payable De­part­ment af­ter it fired five peo­ple from that same de­part­ment.

TSTT re­tained Grav­i­tas Busi­ness So­lu­tions to pro­vide two con­tract work­ers to fill the va­can­cies. Grav­i­tas billed TSTT for over $96,000 for the work of the two for one month. In­sid­ers told Guardian Me­dia that the wage bill for the five em­ploy­ees to­talled $65,000.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the two women were is­sued re­dun­dan­cy let­ters last month and were lat­er giv­en let­ters of re­as­sign­ment or sev­er­ance. Every se­nior staff po­si­tion at TSTT is now re­dun­dant, Guardian Me­dia was told.

Ac­cord­ing to in­sid­ers with knowl­edge of the op­er­a­tions, there are staff mem­bers who are now un­able to get their sev­er­ance let­ters be­cause the pay­off cost is too high.

TSTT yes­ter­day dis­missed an­oth­er 51 peo­ple. In a me­dia re­lease on the dis­missals, the com­pa­ny said it had com­plet­ed its staff ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion ex­er­cise and 51 non–unionised em­ploy­ees were served re­trench­ment no­tices.

TSTT said, "An out of court set­tle­ment fa­cil­i­tat­ed the res­ig­na­tions of 77 em­ploy­ees who were ap­pli­cants for the VSEP pro­gramme of­fered by TSTT in 2014.

"These em­ploy­ees were pre­vi­ous­ly de­nied their re­quest for sep­a­ra­tion as a re­sult of an in­junc­tion lodged at the In­dus­tri­al Court.”

TSTT said this ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion of staff is ex­pect­ed to save the com­pa­ny some $270 mil­lion per year.

TSTT said this re­trench­ment would bring the com­pa­ny "in line with the in­dus­try bench­mark for em­ploy­ee costs, which is 15% of rev­enue.”

"In keep­ing with its strate­gic man­date, TSTT al­so en­vis­ages no salary in­creas­es for the out­stand­ing pe­ri­ods 2014 to 2018. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, TSTT’s an­nu­al rev­enue per em­ploy­ee of US$177K is ex­pect­ed to trend clos­er to the in­dus­try stan­dard of US$400K," TSTT said.