An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The first six months of the T&T Trade and In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion Agency Ltd (TT­TI­PA) are not go­ing as smooth­ly as the Gov­ern­ment would have hoped, as sev­er­al work­ers are ag­griev­ed at the fi­nan­cial terms of their tran­si­tion to the new agency.

TT­TI­PA was es­tab­lished in Sep­tem­ber last year based on the amal­ga­ma­tion of three pri­or com­pa­nies: Ex­porTT; In­vest TT and Cre­ativeTT,

One un­hap­py work­er is an Ex­porTT em­ploy­ee who re­quest­ed that her name not be used to pro­tect her iden­ti­ty and who has sought le­gal ad­vice as she fights for a sev­er­ance pay­ment.

How­ev­er, TT­TI­PA’s chair, Fran­ka Costel­loe, who pre­vi­ous­ly chaired In­vesTT, said the ex­porTT work­er has not been ter­mi­nat­ed and would be en­ti­tled to her pen­sion ben­e­fits, not sev­er­ance.

The work­er said she wrote to the agency’s gen­er­al man­ag­er of Client Ser­vices, Dhan­raj Har­ryper­sad, on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, for a sep­a­ra­tion pack­age as she was ready to leave be­fore re­tire­ment in 2025.

She not­ed that Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon in­di­cat­ed in a Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian ar­ti­cle on Au­gust 18, 2024 that em­ploy­ees who did not want to be part of the new agency, could opt to take sev­er­ance.

How­ev­er, in a let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 17, 2024, Har­ryper­sad re­spond­ed to the work­er by stat­ing, “We ac­knowl­edge that this was the po­si­tion of the Min­is­ter as pub­licly ex­pressed. In our view, the sep­a­ra­tion pack­age was con­tin­gent up­on the com­pa­ny first mak­ing an of­fer of em­ploy­ment sub­ject to the com­ple­tion of the tran­si­tion pe­ri­od and the fill­ing of va­can­cies. As such your re­quest is pre­ma­ture as we are still in the tran­si­tion stage and have not made any for­mal de­ter­mi­na­tion of the po­si­tions in the or­gan­i­sa­tion to be filled, nor has the com­pa­ny made any for­mal of­fer of em­ploy­ment to you or any oth­er per­sons. Giv­en this re­al­i­ty, your re­quest for a sep­a­ra­tion pack­age is not ap­proved at this point.”

The ag­griev­ed work­er, who did not take this let­ter light­ly, has since re­tained a lawyer to deal with this mat­ter. She said the amal­ga­ma­tion had been in the mak­ing for the past three years and she had been want­i­ng to leave ex­porTT to mi­grate, but was told by a se­nior of­fi­cial un­der the new agency that a sev­er­ance pack­age would be avail­able.

She in­di­cat­ed that four oth­er work­ers went home with­out sev­er­ance pack­ages.  

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Gopee-Scoon said peo­ple are rais­ing is­sues that have not arisen as TT­TI­PA is in the process of re­cruit­ing em­ploy­ees for the new or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“There are 110 po­si­tions and there are 77 peo­ple in to­tal. There­fore there’s ab­solute­ly no is­sue with job se­cu­ri­ty. Our first ob­jec­tive is to place peo­ple in jobs in a merged in­sti­tu­tion. I may have been men­tioned, as min­is­ter, sev­er­ance, but I would have been very care­ful to say in the long run if some­one is not a fit in the job de­scrip­tion, then sev­er­ance comes in­to play, but we haven’t even got to that stage,” Gopee-Scoon ex­plained.

TT­TI­PA chair Costel­loe, speak­ing on the is­sue, said she met the em­ploy­ee at the first town hall meet­ing of the agency and they had a con­ver­sa­tion. The em­ploy­ee in­formed Costel­loe that she re­mar­ried and want­ed to go to Cana­da to be with her hus­band since the an­nounce­ment of the amal­ga­ma­tion a few years ago.  

“I said that’s won­der­ful news and you must be look­ing for­ward to it and when she ex­plained to me well I’m wait­ing on my sev­er­ance be­fore my re­tire­ment. I was very con­fused by that strat­e­gy. I said well you know if you want to re­sign then that is a res­ig­na­tion, but if you’re wait­ing for re­tire­ment and re­tire­ment is around the cor­ner in April 2025, then you will re­tire but peo­ple would be po­si­tioned in­to the com­pa­ny. We have 110 po­si­tions and 77 peo­ple. Re­trench­ment and sev­er­ance is the fur­thest thing as we have po­si­tions to be filled,” Costel­loe said.

Con­cern­ing the oth­er work­ers af­fect­ed, Costel­loe said at first their names did not ring a bell as they re­tired last year and wereen­ti­tled to their pen­sion ben­e­fits once stip­u­lat­ed in their con­tracts, but not sev­er­ance as they ar­gued.

Oth­er work­ers who spoke on the ba­sis of anonymi­ty, said they had con­cerns about job se­cu­ri­ty as noth­ing had been told to them and they were hear­ing things through the grapevine.

“No new job de­scrip­tion was shared. They said that even­tu­al­ly every­body has to ap­ply for a new po­si­tion, but I don’t un­der­stand why I have to ap­ply for some­thing or a po­si­tion in a com­pa­ny that I’m al­ready em­ployed in. I have no in­ten­tion of ap­ply­ing. The oth­er is­sue is that we have no job de­scrip­tion.  What they are at­tempt­ing to do is by word of mouth ask per­sons to do new du­ties,” one work­er lament­ed.

An­oth­er is­sue was the va­ca­tion leave of sev­er­al work­ers which was mis­cal­cu­lat­ed. The work­er said if this was not brought to man­age­ment’s at­ten­tion via many let­ters, noth­ing would have been done.

Re­spond­ing to this, Costel­loe said, “It was a hu­man er­ror, and per­sons are al­lowed to make mis­takes, and the mat­ter has since been rec­ti­fied.”

One work­er al­so shared that she was de­nied a loan by a com­mer­cial bank as a re­sult of how the job let­ter was craft­ed say­ing in the first line that TT­TI­PA was on­ly formed last Sep­tem­ber but low­er down stat­ed that the work­er has been part of ex­porTT for sev­er­al years.

“I was de­nied the loan be­cause of this word­ing. The loans of­fi­cer said that the agency was sound­ing shaky, and no guar­an­tee could be giv­en that I would be able to pay back the loan. This is un­ac­cept­able.”

Costel­loe in­di­cat­ed that staff morale was “not great right now, I can ad­mit but we are work­ing hard to im­prove it. I meet with the man­agers once a week. I am meet­ing with the man­agers about what we can do dif­fer­ent­ly. We al­ways start off our meet­ings by talk­ing about what went well in the last week and what our pri­or­i­ties are for the com­ing week. What are our big goals to get to know each oth­er by even talk­ing about what’s hap­pen­ing in our per­son­al spaces.”

Union on recog­ni­tion

The Bank­ing, In­sur­ance, and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU), which rep­re­sents the 55 ex­porTT em­ploy­ees, has been fight­ing for recog­ni­tion sta­tus since TT­TI­PA was formed.

BIG­WU’s pres­i­dent Don De­venish, who has now tak­en over the file, said the mat­ter is be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court, and the hear­ing is set for April 15.

“We have al­ready filed our ar­gu­ment, but up to Jan­u­ary 2025, TT­TI­PA had not filed its ev­i­dence. In a le­gal doc­u­ment, the agency said it would meet and treat the union, but that is far from the re­al­i­ty. It’s just like they are play­ing games,” De­venish said.

He cau­tioned that the amal­ga­ma­tion may cost more than the TT­TI­PA ex­ec­u­tives bar­gain for, if prop­er in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions are not du­ly fol­lowed.|

Costel­loe said she is aware the mat­ter is be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court and what­ev­er the out­come of the rul­ing, the agency would up­hold the law.

She added that the agency would be meet­ing with staff to­day to roll out the ob­jec­tives of the agency.

Asked if there was go­ing to be a name change for TT­TI­PA, the chair kept the new name close to her chest.