Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende

@guardian.co.tt

Just two weeks shy of a year since Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and oth­ers had their da­ta stolen in one of the largest da­ta breach­es in the coun­try, the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) is again de­mand­ing the find­ings of a re­port in­to the breach.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, CWU Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer re­peat­ed her call for the re­port.

In a me­dia re­lease on No­vem­ber 5 last year, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les or­dered the board of TSTT to com­mis­sion “an in­de­pen­dent in­quiry in­to the mat­ter and to make pub­lic the facts and find­ings.”

In June, Gon­za­les said the re­port could not be rushed, adding he had not re­ceived the re­port yet.

“You can’t give a dead­line in these types of mat­ters. It’s an in­ves­ti­ga­tion that may have se­ri­ous le­gal reper­cus­sions if not man­aged in a del­i­cate man­ner,” he said then.

At her brief­ing yes­ter­day, Ogeer chal­lenged Gon­za­les and the board of TSTT for the re­port.

“Where is the cy­ber­at­tack re­port? Prob­a­bly lost in the Bermu­da Tri­an­gle, I don’t know,” she said.

In June, af­ter Gon­za­les said the re­port was not to be rushed, the CWU said it was “very con­cerned” about the de­lay in sub­mit­ting the re­port, which at the time was due to the board of di­rec­tors not be­ing in­stalled.

Apart from that re­port, she al­so called on Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to make good on a two-year-old promise to sub­mit a foren­sic au­dit in­to TSTT. She said in June 2022, Im­bert said the re­port would take six weeks and to date, he had not met with the union or pub­lished the re­port.

Ogeer chas­tised Gon­za­les for fail­ing to meet with the union de­spite sev­er­al let­ters re­quest­ing such to dis­cuss, among oth­er things, TSTT’s five-year strate­gic plan, new busi­ness ini­tia­tives, failed de­liv­er­ables and the op­er­a­tional cost of TSTT.

Ogeer al­so took jabs at the man­age­ment of TSTT, which she said seemed to favour Am­plia over past and cur­rent work­ers at TSTT, who are strug­gling to get ba­sic pro­tec­tive gears and out­stand­ing pay­ments while Am­plia staff were show­ered with new uni­forms, ad­ver­tise­ments and new ve­hi­cles.

She hint­ed that TSTT man­age­ment was pur­pose­ly mis­man­ag­ing the state en­ti­ty in a bid to re­trench more work­ers and even­tu­al­ly sell it off to “the one per cent,” call­ing it a “Petrotrin play­book.”

While she de­nied be­ing an­ti-Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, Ogeer threat­ened to “re­trench the Gov­ern­ment” if it did not ad­dress con­cerns at TSTT, which she claimed in­clud­ed cash flow prob­lems and out­stand­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with a ze­ro per cent of­fer for the 2020 to 2022 pe­ri­od.

Asked yes­ter­day about the re­port and calls to meet the union, Gon­za­les said he was not re­spond­ing to its call for a re­port up­date, adding a meet­ing may al­so be a breach of es­tab­lished process­es.

“Every time I speak to the chair­man, every time I have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak to the CEO, I specif­i­cal­ly ask about their re­la­tion­ship with the union. Based on what they have told me, they have no is­sue with the union, so I don’t know what the union wants to meet with me for,” he said.

He said if there was any col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment re­quir­ing that he meet with them, then he would be guid­ed by that, but was not go­ing to meet with any­one “ad hoc,” which he said could be mis­con­strued, con­sid­er­ing ex­ist­ing process­es.