The Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty’s (MTS) biggest chal­lenge is the debts owed to MTS, which stand at $620 mil­lion – of which the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry is the largest debtor, ow­ing $350 mil­lion.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of MTS Lennox Rat­tans­ingh said this yes­ter­day when of­fi­cials were in­ter­viewed by the Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ac­counts En­ter­pris­es Com­mit­tee (PAEC) head­ed by UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark.

Rat­tans­ingh said MTS was prof­itable, doesn’t re­ceive a sub­ven­tion and has 6,000-plus em­ploy­ees with more women in se­cu­ri­ty than men. Rev­enue was $550 mil­lion and he pro­ject­ed more would be gained based on project man­age­ment. MTS is al­so tar­get­ing the pri­vate sec­tor.

But he said re­ceiv­ables owed to MTS by oth­er agen­cies were $715 mil­lion in 2021. And it’s $620 mil­lion now, since $100 mil­lion was re­ceived in 2022. He said that was a pos­i­tive sign.
The largest debtors are: the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry (ow­ing $350 mil­lion), Ju­di­cia­ry ($92m), TTPS ($32m), To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly ( $14m) and the HDC ($14m).

MTS chair­man Jack­ie Lazarus has said the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry was a crit­i­cal MTS client in terms of the over­all wel­fare of so­ci­ety as­so­ci­at­ed with MTS’ work with that min­istry.

Fi­nance Min­istry’s Ryan Ma­haraj (In­vest­ment ) agreed with Lazarus, adding the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry had to get help from the Min­istry of Fi­nance to liq­ui­date the debt.
Any short­fall is sup­ple­ment­ed in the mid-year re­view, he added.

But PAEC mem­ber Rush­ton Paray, who com­mend­ed MTS’ work in Ma­yaro and in hir­ing women, felt Fi­nance had a rudi­men­ta­ry ap­proach and “no teeth” in the mat­ter.

Rat­tans­ingh said MTS, gov­erned by the man­u­al for state en­ti­ties, couldn’t take le­gal ac­tion against gov­ern­ment agen­cies. He said MTS once en­tered an arrange­ment with HDC but it wasn’t ad­hered to.

“We are talk­ing to HDC as the mat­ter con­cerns us deeply,” he said.

MTS writes debtors and gets ac­knowl­edge­ment from most clients, he added.

Per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Nico­lette Duke, of MTS’ line Min­istry (Pub­lic Util­i­ties), said the min­istry lob­bies agen­cies to pay MTS.

PAEC mem­ber Kei­th Scot­land rec­om­mend­ed the MTS be giv­en the abil­i­ty to re­cov­er re­ceiv­ables on the cusp of be­ing statute-barred.

Rat­tans­ingh said monies re­ceived are most­ly for salaries, which are $500m an­nu­al­ly.

The MTS fin­ished re­pair­ing 12 schools for the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and is do­ing more in phas­es. It’s re­fur­bish­ing com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres for digi­ti­sa­tion and has the con­tract to move the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­istry from Mor­vant to the Prime Min­is­ter’s Of­fice in Port-of-Spain.

Oth­er chal­lenges Rat­tans­ingh cit­ed were ne­go­ti­a­tions for ad­min­is­tra­tive, tech­ni­cal and man­age­r­i­al staff who hadn’t got an in­crease since 2010.

MTS is al­so await­ing ap­proval from the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer on this.
An­oth­er chal­lenge is the “un­even play­ing field” of com­pe­ti­tion where “every­one with a mop or broom is a jan­i­to­r­i­al com­pa­ny,” he added.

Rat­tans­ingh said dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, 4,000 staff mem­bers came out to work as es­sen­tial ser­vices.