RHON­DOR DOWLAT 

Se­nior Re­porter 

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt 

The Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AATT) has fi­nal­ized col­lec­tive agree­ments with the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA), grant­i­ng a 4% salary in­crease for se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers at the na­tion's air­ports. 

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease on Thurs­day by the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, the agree­ments, cov­er­ing the pe­ri­ods 2015-2017 and 2018-2020, were signed on De­cem­ber 11, 2024, at the Ad­min­is­tra­tion Cen­tre, Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

This agree­ment, ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly, marks a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in the Au­thor­i­ty's com­mit­ment to en­hanc­ing em­ploy­ee wel­fare while main­tain­ing high stan­dards of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty at air­port fa­cil­i­ties. Con­struc­tive dis­cus­sions and mu­tu­al co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the AATT and the EPA led to the suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion of the ne­go­ti­a­tions, guid­ed by the Board’s lead­er­ship.

Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of the AATT, Hay­den New­ton, ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with the out­come. He stat­ed:

“This col­lec­tive agree­ment re­flects our com­mit­ment to valu­ing and rec­og­niz­ing the ded­i­ca­tion of our se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, who are in­te­gral to the safe and ef­fi­cient op­er­a­tion of our air­ports. We are proud to fos­ter a col­lab­o­ra­tive re­la­tion­ship with the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion and look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing our ef­forts to sup­port our work­force and en­hance air­port ser­vices.”

Pres­i­dent of the EPA, Deryck Richard­son, high­light­ed the mem­ber­ship's ap­proval of the agree­ment and the fo­cus on ad­dress­ing fu­ture pe­ri­ods. He ac­knowl­edged the con­tri­bu­tions of the AATT’s ne­go­ti­a­tion team, led by In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Con­sul­tant Noel Robin­son and HR Man­ag­er Caron Web­ster, as well as the piv­otal role of Hay­den New­ton in reach­ing an agree­ment.

“The AATT stuck to their word on com­mit­ments giv­en at the ta­ble, and we re­spect that im­mense­ly. Our fo­cus re­mains on se­cur­ing the best in­ter­ests of our mem­bers while adding val­ue to the AATT and, by ex­ten­sion, Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Richard­son said.