KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) has in­struct­ed its at­tor­neys to is­sue a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter against the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Ltd (MTS), seek­ing to re­cov­er more than $82,000 in mem­ber­ship dues it claims were de­duct­ed from of­fi­cers’ salaries but nev­er re­mit­ted.

The As­so­ci­a­tion said the move fol­lows years of un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts to re­solve what it de­scribed as chron­ic re­mit­tance fail­ures, which it said have al­so af­fect­ed of­fi­cers’ and re­tirees’ ac­cess to health­care ben­e­fits they had al­ready paid for.

The dis­pute comes as MTS con­tin­ues to grap­ple with fi­nan­cial chal­lenges pre­vi­ous­ly out­lined be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of Par­lia­ment, where the com­pa­ny dis­closed con­cerns sur­round­ing out­stand­ing ar­rears owed by clients and its abil­i­ty to main­tain cash flow.

MTS act­ing CEO Nicholas Kan­hai told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties pre­dat­ed the cur­rent board’s ap­point­ment and were not a re­cent de­vel­op­ment.

“MTS, as the pub­lic would be very much aware, has had its fair share of fi­nan­cial chal­lenges which this board would have met up­on as­sum­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty just over a year ago,” he said.

Kan­hai said one of the is­sues dis­cussed be­fore the JSC was the com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to col­lect out­stand­ing ar­rears from clients.

“It’s not a to­day’s prob­lem,” he said, adding that the board had in­struct­ed man­age­ment to rec­on­cile out­stand­ing pay­ments and pur­sue an ag­gres­sive col­lec­tion dri­ve.

He said the ob­jec­tive was to en­sure MTS could meet its fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions, in­clud­ing pay­ments to sup­pli­ers, salaries and em­ploy­ee de­duc­tions.

Kan­hai ac­knowl­edged that both the EPA and the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU), which rep­re­sent MTS em­ploy­ees, had been af­fect­ed by the sit­u­a­tion.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, EPA pres­i­dent Deryck Richard­son al­leged that de­duc­tions for the Mil­len­ni­um In­sur­ance Bro­kers Se­cu­ri­ty Of­fi­cers Health Plan, un­der­writ­ten by Sagi­cor In­sur­ance, had not been re­mit­ted since June.

Ac­cord­ing to the As­so­ci­a­tion, the al­leged non-pay­ment re­sult­ed in the sus­pen­sion of the Cari­Care Card fa­cil­i­ty, forc­ing of­fi­cers to pay the full cost of med­ical treat­ment and med­ica­tion be­fore seek­ing re­im­burse­ment. Richard­son said many of­fi­cers could not af­ford those up­front costs, while re­tirees liv­ing main­ly on Na­tion­al In­sur­ance pay­ments were among those hard­est hit.

“Our pa­tience has now been ex­haust­ed,” Richard­son said.

In a no­tice is­sued to work­ers, Mil­len­ni­um In­sur­ance Bro­kers ad­vised that ser­vices re­lat­ed to the use of the Cari­Care Card would be tem­porar­i­ly un­avail­able.

The com­pa­ny said claims could still be sub­mit­ted through the tra­di­tion­al process by pro­vid­ing claim forms and sup­port­ing doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing re­ceipts and re­fer­rals, and that work­ers would be no­ti­fied once card ser­vices re­sumed.

The As­so­ci­a­tion al­leged the re­mit­tance prob­lems have ex­ist­ed since 2018 de­spite re­peat­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tions to MTS man­age­ment, min­is­ters and oth­er au­thor­i­ties.

It said the mat­ter was raised with Line Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath in 2025 and not­ed that in Au­gust that year, he pub­licly stat­ed ef­forts were un­der­way to ad­dress the com­pa­ny’s pay­ment is­sues. Near­ly a year lat­er, how­ev­er, the EPA said of­fi­cers and re­tirees con­tin­ue to face the con­se­quences of the al­leged fail­ures.