DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Of­fi­cials of the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU) have ex­pressed out­rage at be­ing de­nied an op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet with the chair­man of the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) yes­ter­day.

Af­ter spend­ing more than an hour at City Gate, they were told the meet­ing had been post­poned. A new date was not giv­en and the union of­fi­cials protest­ed in re­sponse, crit­i­cis­ing the PTSC for fail­ing to re­veal the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer’s of­fer for back pay.

TI­WU pres­i­dent Shawn Roberts said an of­fer was re­port­ed­ly pro­vid­ed last year but the union was told they had to wait for a PTSC board to be in­stalled be­fore it could be dis­cussed.

Since this has not oc­curred, Roberts has con­demned the PTSC’s fail­ure to meet its oblig­a­tions to work­ers and sent a di­rect mes­sage to the board.

“Work­ers are dis­grun­tled,” he said as union mem­bers re­spond­ed with a re­sound­ing “no” when he asked if they were hap­py.

He added that the em­ploy­ees are fac­ing oth­er chal­lenges.

“It have a lot of is­sues, es­pe­cial­ly like prop­er PPE. For some time now, maybe go­ing on the past two years, work­ers haven’t re­ceived prop­er PPE and work­ers are still, be­cause of the love and the pas­sion for their work, some of them work­ing in sneak­ers and they’re not com­plain­ing for the past four, five years. We al­so have sit­u­a­tions in the back where the floor is very dirty where work­ers have to go be­low bus and the ground is very dis­taste­ful. We still de­cide to work with all this prob­lem,” he said.

PTSC of­fi­cials did not re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.