Na­tion­al tele­coms com­pa­ny, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) is re­fut­ing claims by the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union that Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, Sen­a­tor Has­sel Bac­chus, was giv­en spe­cial pay­ments up­on his re­tire­ment from the com­pa­ny.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued last night, TSTT ac­cused the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union of mak­ing “some patent­ly false al­le­ga­tions against the Board and man­age­ment of TSTT” which are “sim­ply un­found­ed”.

In its state­ment on the mat­ter, the com­pa­ny as­serts that no pref­er­en­tial treat­ment was giv­en to Min­is­ter Bac­chus, and any pay­ments made to him were in ac­cor­dance with stan­dard HR prac­tise.

TSTT said:

“TSTT treats all em­ploy­ee and HR-re­lat­ed mat­ters in the strictest con­fi­dence and there­fore will not dis­close any de­tails of a for­mer em­ploy­ee’s con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments in­clu­sive of pen­sion ben­e­fits, ir­re­spec­tive of the in­di­vid­ual’s po­si­tion or tenure.

How­ev­er, TSTT wish­es to state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that save for the trans­fer of a ve­hi­cle, no ex-gra­tia pay­ment was made to Sen­a­tor Has­sel Bac­chus on his de­par­ture from the or­ga­ni­za­tion.

TSTT can al­so con­firm that the process used to de­ter­mine Sen­a­tor Bac­chus’ pen­sion ben­e­fits, af­ter 31 years of ser­vice, was in full com­pli­ance with the pro­vi­sions of the Trust Deed and Rules of the req­ui­site pen­sion plan.

The cal­cu­la­tion and pay­ment of pen­sion ben­e­fits were ad­min­is­tered by the in­de­pen­dent Trustees of the Pen­sion Plan and as such no pay­ments were made di­rect­ly by the Com­pa­ny, nor was the Com­pa­ny in­volved in the com­pu­ta­tion.

Any spec­u­la­tion ques­tion­ing the in­tegri­ty of the process is sim­ply un­found­ed.”

In a Face­book live broad­cast on Fri­day, CWU Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Clyde El­der al­leged that there was a pay­ment of more than $2 mil­lion and a month­ly pen­sion of $56,000 to now Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Sen­a­tor Has­sel Bac­chus, af­ter his res­ig­na­tion from TSTT.

El­der called for a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what he says was pref­er­en­tial treat­ment af­ford­ed to Min­is­ter Bac­chus by the com­pa­ny, pri­or to his be­com­ing a Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor and Min­is­ter.