“He said there has been no im­prove­ment on the of­fer from the Gov­ern­ment and the four per cent is in fact the fi­nal of­fer.”

In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer of the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) Sec­ond Di­vi­sion, Wen­dell Mitchell said the Gov­ern­ment’s new po­si­tion on wage ne­go­ti­a­tions has been made clear through Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al.

The four per cent of­fer which cov­ers the ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­od from 2014 to 2019 (0,0,2,0,0,2) had al­ready been re­ject­ed by the first and sec­ond di­vi­sion as­so­ci­a­tions and they were hope­ful of an im­prove­ment when they sat across the ta­ble from the CPO yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Mitchell said this op­ti­mism fol­lowed re­cent ut­ter­ances from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley about the coun­try record­ing a wind­fall of more than $8 bil­lion as a re­sult of the in­crease in prices for oil and en­er­gy prod­ucts on the glob­al mar­ket.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, you could imag­ine that would have left both as­so­ci­a­tions to­tal­ly de­ject­ed and dis­ap­point­ed by this lat­est de­vel­op­ment,” he said.

Mitchell said the CPO Din­di­al has to place his ut­ter­ances in writ­ing fol­low­ing which the as­so­ci­a­tion will meet with its mem­ber­ship to dis­cuss the steps to take.

“I feel our mem­bers will feel a lot of out­rage, they will feel be­trayed,” he added.

Asked what his mes­sage to the coun­try would be, “stay tuned,” he said.

On Sun­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) was pray­ing for an im­proved of­fer but suf­fered the same fate as their prison ser­vice coun­ter­parts.

In a state­ment, the as­so­ci­a­tion wrote that its “counter of­fer pro­posed by the mem­ber­ship of 5%, 5%, 5% for the pe­ri­od 2014-2016 and 4%, 4%, 4% for the pe­ri­od 2017-2019 was re­ject­ed by the Gov­ern­ment.”

The TTPSS­WA said it was al­so told that the four per cent of­fer on the ta­ble was the fi­nal one.

As it re­lat­ed to the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (FOA), while the words fi­nal of­fer were not used dur­ing their meet­ing with the CPO yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the wage in­crease of­fer stayed the same.

As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Leo Ramkissoon claimed they were re­port­ed­ly be­ing “threat­ened” in­to tak­ing the of­fer.

“If you are telling us that you would take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion our views, then we can­not see why you should al­so be mak­ing the state­ment that if we don’t ac­cept you might take this mat­ter to the court; that is a re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty, we find that to be a strong-arm­ing tac­tic, a bul­ly­ing tac­tic and we don’t ap­pre­ci­ate that and we made that clear to the CPO,” Ramkissoon said.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ramkissoon de­scribed the meet­ing as “tense but pro­fes­sion­al,” how­ev­er, they re­mained un­hap­py with the re­sult or lack there­of.

“It was less than sat­is­fac­to­ry the out­come of the dis­cus­sions as far as the Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion is con­cerned,” he added.

He said they ex­pect­ed to see what he called move­ment in the right di­rec­tion but the CPO did not budge.

Ramkissoon said the CPO, how­ev­er, promised that he would con­vey their con­cerns to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert and get back to them with a re­sponse.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that all three as­so­ci­a­tions rep­re­sent­ing the pro­tec­tive ser­vices al­so plan to have a joint dis­cus­sion on this new stance tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment.

On June 18, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed it would cost the Gov­ern­ment $2.5 bil­lion in back pay alone to cov­er a four per cent wage in­crease over six years.

He al­so said the Gov­ern­ment would be com­mit­ted to a fur­ther $500 mil­lion, an­nu­al­ly, just for the civ­il ser­vice, teach­ing ser­vice, de­fence force, pro­tec­tive ser­vices and dai­ly rat­ed work­ers.

The CPO ini­tial­ly of­fered a two per cent wage in­crease for the same pe­ri­od to pub­lic sec­tor work­ers which was strong­ly re­ject­ed and led to protests in Port-of-Spain.