RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Scores of MTS se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers protest­ed yes­ter­day, de­mand­ing a wage in­crease.

The protest, which took place in front of MTS’ head­quar­ters in Aranguez, San Juan, al­so saw the work­ers high­light­ing oth­er is­sues, in­clud­ing poor work­ing con­di­tions and a lack of uni­forms.

The group, led by Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Deryck Richard­son, called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert to in­ter­vene so their is­sues could be ad­dressed im­me­di­ate­ly.

Of­fi­cer Robert Be­las­co, who has 29 years of ser­vice with MTS, said se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers de­serve bet­ter.

“We have been work­ing for the past umpteen years from 13 to 16, from 16 to 19 to now and se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers and es­tate con­sta­bles are work­ing for the same mon­ey. That can­not hap­pen. We bring in bil­lions of dol­lars and the of­fi­cers strug­gling and get­ting noth­ing,” he said.

Cpl Joanne Frith, who has 20 years of ser­vice and works in To­ba­go, claimed there is no prop­er or­gan­i­sa­tion in the com­pa­ny and of­fi­cers are not even be­ing sup­plied with uni­forms.

“A lot of things lack­ing. If we have to get any­thing done we have to come to Trinidad, be­cause if we do what­ev­er from To­ba­go it’s go­ing to take very long,” she said.

Za­hir Khan, a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer for the past 15 years, lament­ed that at some lo­ca­tions there are no wash­room fa­cil­i­ties for of­fi­cers.

“Of­fi­cers have to walk 500 yards or more. At one lo­ca­tion, there is no toi­let bowl, of­fi­cers have to use a pee buck­et,” he claimed.

Richard­son added, “It is dis­re­spect­ful when MTS is a State com­pa­ny and would be of­fer­ing two per cent in­crease for one pe­ri­od, when every­body else get­ting four per cent for two each in two dif­fer­ent pe­ri­ods. But MTS, they came and of­fer two per cent for one pe­ri­od, which is 2013 to 2015.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, MTS cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Adri­an Ray­mond said the com­pa­ny fa­cil­i­tat­ed an im­promp­tu meet­ing re­quest from the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion fol­low­ing the protest.

“The MTS lead­er­ship team met with Deryck Richard­son—pres­i­dent, EPA Robert Ot­t­ley—gen­er­al sec­re­tary, EPA along with oth­er mem­bers of the EPA ex­ec­u­tive and branch board. The com­pa­ny lis­tened to all their con­cerns while al­so out­lin­ing the com­pa­ny’s po­si­tion on the var­i­ous is­sues.

“As part of the salary ne­go­ti­a­tion process, there is the ex­change of pro­pos­als and counter pro­pos­als. As a State en­ter­prise, all counter pro­pos­als sub­mit­ted by the EPA must be care­ful­ly as­sessed and cost­ed by the com­pa­ny be­fore sub­mis­sion to the line min­istry for re­view be­fore on­ward trans­mis­sion to the Chief Per­son­al Of­fi­cer (CPO) for ap­proval.

“The com­pa­ny must fol­low from the CPO re­gard­ing any guide­lines and is await­ing word from that of­fice,” Ray­mond said.