Akash Sama­roo

For­mer Fi­nance and now Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is warn­ing pub­lic ser­vants that their union lead­ers are deny­ing them their back­pay and caus­ing them to suf­fer.

Speak­ing at the Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral Sec­ondary School last evening, Im­bert said the gov­ern­ment is ready to pay back­pay to mem­bers of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), but the union’s ex­ec­u­tive has re­fused to ac­cept the wage of­fer.

“Not on­ly have we of­fered the pub­lic sec­tor unions four per cent for a par­tic­u­lar pe­ri­od, just a cou­ple of months ago we of­fered them five per cent. That’s nine per cent in to­tal,” Im­bert told the hun­dreds of PNM sup­port­ers in at­ten­dance.

Re­cent­ly, the PSA de­clared its full sup­port for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), with both its cur­rent and for­mer pres­i­dents ap­pear­ing on the UNC’s plat­form.

Im­bert ac­cused the UNC of push­ing a false nar­ra­tive that it is the on­ly par­ty that ho­n­ours back­pay com­mit­ments.

He shared an en­counter with a PSA mem­ber who was un­aware of the rea­son for the de­lay in pay­ments.

“When I go out walk­ing from time to time, I meet PSA mem­bers. One said, ‘Im­bert, where’s the back­pay?’ I told him, ‘Your leader didn’t sign the agree­ment. The PSA must sign be­fore you get your back­pay.’”

Im­bert con­tin­ued, “That’s how teach­ers got their back­pay. That’s how po­lice of­fi­cers, prison of­fi­cers, fire of­fi­cers, and the army got their back­pay.”

He ar­gued that PSA lead­ers do not have their mem­bers’ best in­ter­ests at heart and called on work­ers to hold them ac­count­able.

“So I am urg­ing every PSA mem­ber—deal with your lead­ers. They are the ones hold­ing back your back­pay. Every­body else has re­ceived theirs, ex­cept pub­lic ser­vants, be­cause your lead­ers want you to suf­fer,” he said.

Im­bert al­so chal­lenged the UNC’s claims, in­sist­ing the PNM has al­ways ho­n­oured its debts to work­ers, even when left by pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions.

“In 2016, the UNC made their usu­al mad, reck­less promis­es and gave pub­lic ser­vants a 14 per cent in­crease. But they didn’t pay any back­pay—they left that gift for the in­com­ing PNM gov­ern­ment. You know how much we had to pay? Six bil­lion dol­lars. And we paid it in 2016 and 2017.”

He added that this was dur­ing a time when rev­enue had dropped from $58 bil­lion to $36 bil­lion.

Im­bert al­so re­vealed that an­oth­er $1 bil­lion in back­pay was paid in De­cem­ber 2023, bring­ing the to­tal un­der the PNM to $7 bil­lion.

“The UNC hasn’t paid one cent in back­pay.”

He con­clud­ed the top­ic by ex­press­ing hope that the union lead­ers would come to their sens­es.