KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

NATUC is call­ing on Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to per­mit gov­ern­ment min­istries to al­low loan pay­ments to be de­duct­ed from the salaries of its union mem­bers.

This is be­cause the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NATUC) has part­nered with mon­ey lender WiLoan, a sub­sidiary of Wi­Pay, to of­fer back-to-school loans to union mem­bers.

From Mon­day, mem­bers of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU), Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU) as well as the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) will be able to ap­ply for loans rang­ing from $5,000 to $10,000 to as­sist with pur­chas­ing school sup­plies for their chil­dren.

Ac­cord­ing to Wi­Pay, it has a mon­ey lend­ing li­cence which al­lows the com­pa­ny to dis­pense mil­lions of dol­lars in loans.

How­ev­er, they will on­ly be grant­i­ng these loans un­der the con­di­tion that they be re­paid through salary de­duc­tions.

In 2021, NATUC and WiLoan of­fered COVID-19 re­lief loans of up to $20,000 to union mem­bers.

How­ev­er, NATUC’s Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette said sev­er­al gov­ern­ment min­istries pre­vent­ed mem­bers from ac­cess­ing the loans be­cause they did not al­low salary de­duc­tions.

Speak­ing at NUGFW’s head­quar­ters on Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, An­nisette ques­tioned why gov­ern­ment min­istries were be­ing re­luc­tant while oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions have no is­sue with this union-mon­ey lender part­ner­ship.

An­nisette said, “This is a ser­vice that we’re talk­ing about ed­u­ca­tion and we see no rea­son why any min­istry would refuse to do salary de­duc­tions so that gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees can ac­cess a loan. It is done for oth­er in­sti­tu­tions and we ques­tion why there was this re­luc­tance in some min­istries.

“I’m hop­ing that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance would use his good of­fice to en­sure that per­mis­sion is giv­en to all the min­istries to do the salary de­duc­tions so that they can ac­cess these loans.”

Mean­while, WiLoan chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ald­wyn Wayne as­sured an al­most 100 per cent guar­an­teed loan ap­proval.

He said the loan will have a six-month re­pay­ment pe­ri­od with an in­ter­est rate of around two per cent.