The Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) has once again sent a mes­sage to the Gov­ern­ment that it is re­ject­ing the four per cent salary wage in­crease of­fered to pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

The state­ment fol­lows a new po­si­tion ex­pressed by Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al to the pro­tec­tive ser­vices that four per cent (0,0,2,0,0,2) is the fi­nal of­fer from the Gov­ern­ment.

The of­fer cov­ers the bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od 2014 to 2019.

How­ev­er, speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, JTUM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ozzi War­rick said the union um­brel­la body had reaf­firmed its re­jec­tion of the of­fer.

“Meet­ings are con­tin­u­ing with oth­er unions, which will in­clude some JTUM mem­bers. We will, there­fore, re­spond when that is com­plete, as we should wait for the feed­back from the oth­er unions. But bear in mind that JTUM al­ready stat­ed pub­licly that we do not agree with the of­fer and have re­ject­ed it in the strongest pos­si­ble terms, that po­si­tion still stands,” he said.

On Sun­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) was told that the Gov­ern­ment had re­ject­ed its coun­ter­pro­pos­al of 15 per cent for 2014 to 2016 and 12 per cent from 2017 to 2019 and that the four per cent on the ta­ble will not be in­creased.

On Tues­day, the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (POA) was told the same thing by the CPO. In a memo to its mem­bers yes­ter­day, the POA in­formed them of the CPO’s new po­si­tion.

It said its pres­i­dent, Ceron Richards, “im­me­di­ate­ly ex­pressed our dis­plea­sure/dis­sat­is­fac­tion with this ap­par­ent strong-arm tac­tic be­ing used.”

The memo al­so in­di­cat­ed that the as­so­ci­a­tion re­mind­ed the CPO of the eco­nom­ic hard­ships be­ing faced by prison of­fi­cers and asked that this be re­layed to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

The POA added that pos­i­tive head­way was made in oth­er mat­ters that were dis­cussed, among them new and ex­ist­ing al­lowances.

It said they were able to get an “ap­proval/com­mit­ment for the draft­ing of a Cab­i­net note to ad­just prison of­fi­cer va­ca­tion Leave en­ti­tle­ment in ac­cor­dance to our salary grade.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so told mem­bers that an­oth­er agree­ment was reached for the con­tin­ued pay­ment of meal al­lowances while on all pe­ri­ods of ap­proved leave.

Aside from as­so­ci­a­tions rep­re­sent­ing pro­tec­tive ser­vices, the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion(TTUTA) and the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) are al­so be­fore the CPO ne­go­ti­at­ing for the 2014 to 2019 pe­ri­od.