Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion (TTNNA) pres­i­dent Idi Stu­art yes­ter­day con­grat­u­lat­ed the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and pub­lic ser­vants af­ter they re­ceived their ini­tial back­pay pay­ments from the Gov­ern­ment.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo an­nounced the pay­out in a What­sApp sta­tus which read, “Still think the me­dia is un­bi­ased? Salaries and back­pay on time and not a me­dia house beep.”

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Stu­art said, “The Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion would want to con­grat­u­late the PSA and all pub­lic ser­vants who are in a po­si­tion to re­al­ly en­joy their back­pay, even though it’s an ad­vanced bro­ken-down amount. It’s still quite a Her­culean task to have achieved such a feat in such a short space of time.”

Stu­art said the de­vel­op­ment now places an ex­pec­ta­tion on the State to en­gage oth­er unions.

“So, we def­i­nite­ly want to con­grat­u­late them and ob­vi­ous­ly, they’ll be get­ting their new salaries in Jan­u­ary 2026. But def­i­nite­ly, it would now call, and an ex­pec­ta­tion would be made, that all oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions, all oth­er unions op­er­at­ing with­in the state en­ter­pris­es sec­tor would be called for ne­go­ti­a­tions like­wise,” he said.

Stu­art al­so said dis­cus­sions had be­gun with health sec­tor unions fol­low­ing di­rec­tives from the Min­is­ter of Health.

“We would want to thank our line min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter of Health, for giv­ing clear di­rec­tions to the CEOs of the RHAs and the board to com­mence ne­go­ti­a­tions with all of the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty unions who op­er­ate with­in the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties,” he said.

He said the TTNNA par­tic­i­pat­ed in dis­cus­sions on Thurs­day and both sides sig­nalled a de­sire to con­clude talks quick­ly.

“We know our mem­bers will be dis­ap­point­ed that they won’t be able to ben­e­fit from any salary in­crease or back­pay be­fore the year’s out. How­ev­er, we be­lieve every­thing is in due course, and we would want to re­as­sure mem­bers we’re go­ing to do every­thing pos­si­ble to make sure that they ben­e­fit as soon as pos­si­ble.”

How­ev­er, al­though Tan­coo made the an­nounce­ment on so­cial me­dia, there was no of­fi­cial re­lease from the Min­istry of Fi­nance con­firm­ing that the pay­ments were made to pub­lic ser­vants. Up to news time, the What­sApp sta­tus re­mained the on­ly of­fi­cial Gov­ern­ment com­ment on salaries be­ing paid.

Guardian Me­dia asked the min­is­ter to clar­i­fy what he meant by “all” salaries and back­pay be­ing paid on time, how many work­ers were paid, the date of pay­ment, and the to­tal cost. Tan­coo, how­ev­er, was in a toy dri­ve in his con­stituen­cy and didn’t re­spond.

Tan­coo’s state­ment came against the back­ground of an agree­ment be­tween the PSA and the Gov­ern­ment for an ad­vance cash pay­ment of back­pay to pub­lic ser­vants be­fore Christ­mas.

So­cial me­dia com­men­ta­tors gave Tan­coo some praise but large­ly re­act­ed with scep­ti­cism and frus­tra­tion to Min­is­ter Tan­coo’s claims that all salaries and back­pay were paid on time. Many users ac­cused him of ig­nor­ing re­tirees, dai­ly-paid work­ers, sub­sti­tute teach­ers, and con­tract staff who had not yet re­ceived pay­ments. Oth­ers ques­tioned why Tan­coo want­ed ap­plause for do­ing his job, en­sur­ing that pub­lic ser­vants are paid on time as promised.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas to ver­i­fy whether all salaries and back­pay were, in fact, paid. She too did not re­spond. Thomas had agreed that pub­lic ser­vants would take a part pay­ment of the back­pay owed to them in cash be­fore the end of the year.

The ad­vance on the ar­rears formed part of an agree­ment Thomas signed with Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Daryl Din­di­al two weeks ago.

Thomas, who rep­re­sents ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25,000 pub­lic ser­vants, de­clined to dis­close the ex­act fig­ure of the ad­vance, cit­ing safe­ty con­cerns, but said then she ex­pects mem­bers will be sat­is­fied.

The agree­ment is ex­pect­ed to cost the Gov­ern­ment $3.8 bil­lion, with an ad­di­tion­al $420 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly in re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture.