Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union (CWU) ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer Len Ger­vais led a hand­ful of re­tirees of TEL­CO, now Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T, out­side Roy­al Bank, St Clair, yes­ter­day, de­mand­ing that the bank re­lease funds that will in­crease the pen­sion­ers’ in­comes. The union met with bank of­fi­cials mo­ments be­fore on the mat­ter but led the protest af­ter not be­ing sat­is­fied with what was told to them.

Speak­ing with the me­dia op­po­site the bank, where the pen­sion­ers’ trust is held, Ger­vais said some 1,500 re­tirees stand to ben­e­fit if the bank re­leas­es the funds. He added that about 20 pen­sion­ers, all in their 90s, stand to ben­e­fit from an in­crease in pen­sion from be­tween $700 to $3,000.

“We are here ask­ing RBC Trust for in­creas­es in pen­sion for some pen­sion­ers. There are some pen­sion­ers who are get­ting as lit­tle as $900 and we are ask­ing for that to be in­creased to $3,000, which the com­pa­ny al­ready agreed to. Sec­ond­ly, there is the pay­ment of about 1.5 per cent that have to re­pay pen­sion­ers in the TEL­CO pen­sion plan that has been agreed to but they have been re­fus­ing to im­ple­ment that,” he claimed.

Ger­vais said there is a sug­ges­tion that both re­tire­ment plans be merged, which will mean that ben­e­fits agreed to for the TEL­CO pen­sions will be for­feit­ed. He said the union will keep up its protest, de­mand­ing that the pen­sion­ers of TEL­CO be treat­ed fair­ly.

“We want the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go to know what the Gov­ern­ment, the cor­po­rate sole, is con­don­ing at TSTT. They are not in­ter­ven­ing and they are al­low­ing this new CEO to con­tin­ue to treat us with con­tempt which the for­mer CEO, Lisa Agard was treat­ing with.”

Ger­vais said the pen­sion­ers just want those in charge of their in­come to do what is right. The pen­sion­ers have been at odds with TSTT since 2012, in­clud­ing in court bat­tles.