KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Hop­ing to send a strong mes­sage to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, postal work­ers con­verged out­side the Fi­nan­cial Com­plex in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Out­side his of­fice, postal work­ers de­mand­ed an 18.6 per cent wage in­crease they claimed was promised to them since a job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise that was com­plet­ed in 2011.

Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the T&T Postal Work­ers Union (TTP­WU) David Forbes said, “We are here to­day in front of Min­is­ter Im­bert’s of­fice to tell him that we have had enough. He was copied on two let­ters, and he’s be­hav­ing as though he knows noth­ing about this job eval­u­a­tion.”

TTP­WU al­so called out Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les for not help­ing their cause.

How­ev­er, Gon­za­les is tak­ing a hands-off ap­proach when it comes to ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the union and man­age­ment at the T&T Postal Cor­po­ra­tion (TTPOST).

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to him for com­ment via tele­phone yes­ter­day, he said, “The law does not al­low for the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties to in­ter­vene in mat­ters con­cern­ing the terms and con­di­tions of work­ers. That’s a mat­ter that is with­in the ex­clu­sive do­main of the CPO (Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Dr Daryl Din­di­al).”

Bat­tling the scorch­ing heat for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive day, postal work­ers were joined by mem­bers of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union in­clud­ing port work­ers, Avi­a­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Al­lied Work­ers Union, Con­trac­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers Trade Union, Trinidad and To­ba­go Farm­ers Union and oth­ers as they marched from the Aranguez Sa­van­nah to the cap­i­tal city de­mand­ing high­er wages.

JTUM Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Ozzi War­wick called on Im­bert to find the mon­ey to pay work­ers.

War­wick said, “We want we mon­ey back. Find the $2.6B and pay the postal work­ers. Find the $2.5B and pay the port work­ers. Find the $2.5B that miss­ing and pay T&TEC work­ers. Find the $2.5B that gone miss­ing, un­ac­count­ed for and pay the cor­po­ra­tion work­ers, NP work­ers, UTT work­ers, the work­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go ... We want we mon­ey back!”

Postal work­ers in To­ba­go al­so staged a si­mul­ta­ne­ous protest in Scar­bor­ough.

One TTP­WU mem­ber Pre­ston Moses said, “This peace­ful pick­et is about rais­ing aware­ness of our plight that we need the 18.6 per cent. We need this. We de­serve this. We haven’t had a salary in­crease in sev­er­al years. Now we are ask­ing, please, please give us our just due.”

T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) work­ers al­so protest­ed out­side the Mt Hope of­fice ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing. The Com­mis­sion did not com­ment on the protest. In­stead, it sent a state­ment fol­low­ing a pow­er out­age in sev­er­al parts of the coun­try yes­ter­day. It said 20 per cent of its cus­tomers were af­fect­ed.

This oc­curred be­tween 6.55 am and 7.41 am. The com­mis­sion blamed the out­age on a load-shed­ding event on its sys­tem stem­ming from is­sues with mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tor units at in­de­pen­dent pow­er pro­duc­ers sup­ply­ing bulk elec­tric­i­ty to T&TEC.

Yes­ter­day’s protest al­so did not cause any dis­rup­tion of ser­vice at any TTPOST of­fices, ac­cord­ing to its chair­man Michael Seales. Seales said he re­ceived no re­ports of a dis­rup­tion. Port of Port-of-Spain chair­man Lyle Alexan­der al­so said he was not in­formed that there were any dis­rup­tions at the port as some work­ers protest­ed.

Mean­while, asked what their next course of ac­tion will be, TTP­WU said they would be hold­ing a day of prayer soon.