Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says pri­vate sources in­side Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed (NEL) told him about the "pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion" of the state-owned Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT).

Row­ley's ex­pla­na­tion fol­lows a de­mand from TSTT's ma­jor­i­ty union, the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union (CWU), that he come clean about in­for­ma­tion on TSTT he re­vealed dur­ing a ra­dio in­ter­view last Tues­day. In that in­ter­view, Row­ley said he had met with TSTT's com­peti­tor, Dig­i­cel, and learned of the lo­cal com­pa­ny's drop in mar­ket share. In that in­ter­view he al­so said TSTT had hint­ed that it was seek­ing a gov­ern­ment in­jec­tion of cap­i­tal to im­prove its mar­ket share.

In a press state­ment two days af­ter Row­ley's ra­dio in­ter­view, the CWU de­mand­ed more in­for­ma­tion on his meet­ing with Dig­i­cel and on TSTT's re­quest­ed fi­nan­cial in­jec­tion. The union al­so asked the Prime Min­is­ter to re­veal in what year TSTT re­quest­ed fund­ing from the State, the rea­son for the re­quest and the source of his in­for­ma­tion. How­ev­er, while Row­ley oblig­ed enough to ex­plain the meet­ing with Dig­i­cel, he would not budge on his source of in­for­ma­tion.

"Re­cent­ly I heard from oth­er sources at NEL that the TSTT's pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion could be al­le­vi­at­ed by gov­ern­ment in­vest­ment to al­low it to make tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances," Row­ley said in a text re­sponse to ques­tions from the Sun­day Guardian.

NEL is joint­ly owned by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T and Ca­ble & Wire­less (West In­dies) Lim­it­ed. The Gov­ern­ment holds the ma­jor­i­ty 51 per cent of TSTT's is­sued share cap­i­tal and C&W holds the re­main­ing 49 per cent. NEL is a joint own­er of TSTT.

Row­ley said the CWU should not be tar­get­ing him for re­veal­ing the com­pa­ny's state of af­fairs. "The union is bark­ing up the wrong tree. In­for­ma­tion com­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter is not the prob­lem, prop­er man­age­ment of the com­pa­ny is," he said.

No meet­ing­with Dig­i­cel

Row­ley al­so de­nied meet­ing with state-owned TSTT's com­peti­tor in his ca­pac­i­ty as Prime Min­is­ter.

"As Prime Min­is­ter I have met with no com­pa­ny in­volved in the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­dus­try. I met with Dig­i­cel a long time ago in the op­po­si­tion leader's of­fice and there they briefed me on their pres­ence here," he said.

Pressed about the CWU's heat­ed calls for an­swers on the state of TSTT, Row­ley said the union was up­set­ting its mem­ber­ship un­nec­es­sar­i­ly.

"(CWU) is build­ing a con­spir­a­cy to car­ry on un­nec­es­sary an­tag­o­nism. There is no need for that," he said.

He said as Prime Min­is­ter he was re­quired to meet with "all kinds of peo­ple and to draw in­for­ma­tion from a va­ri­ety of sources, so the CWU should not up­set it­self by its own mis­in­for­ma­tion or ner­vous sus­pi­cion."

Row­ley said the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion at TSTT led his Gov­ern­ment to ap­point a "strong and com­pe­tent board" and he warned the unions that he had no in­ten­tion of fight­ing with them.

"We have no in­ten­tion of us­ing our lim­it­ed en­er­gies fight­ing with any union. We'd rather spend that en­er­gy in hope­ful co-op­er­a­tion, in bet­ter man­ag­ing the af­fairs and pub­lic in­vest­ment of which labour is an in­te­gral part," he said.

Re­my: PM need­sto apol­o­gise

CWU sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Joseph Re­my yes­ter­day won­dered whether the Prime Min­is­ter was mak­ing a case for pri­vati­sa­tion of state-owned TSTT.

"I hope I am wrong," he said. Re­my said the CWU was seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on is­sues Row­ley him­self raised in the pub­lic do­main.

"So I don't un­der­stand how I could be bark­ing up the wrong tree. I think he was mis­led and he needs to apol­o­gise to the ex­ec­u­tive of TSTT," he said.

Re­my said the work­ers faced bad pub­lic per­cep­tions when Row­ley made such pro­nounce­ments on the ra­dio.

"We just signed off on the back­pay and now there is word that the com­pa­ny is go­ing around look­ing for mon­ey for up­grades. It makes the work­ers look heart­less and like they do not care about the fu­ture of the com­pa­ny and that is the fur­thest thing from the truth," Re­my said.

He said Row­ley need­ed to be clear­er when mak­ing pub­lic state­ments: "We need to have con­fi­dence when the Prime Min­is­ter speaks."