Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Postal Work­ers Union (TTP­WU) has raised se­ri­ous alarm over the treat­ment of TTPost work­ers, warn­ing that sys­temic un­der­staffing and op­er­a­tional strain could jeop­ar­dise the time­ly de­liv­ery of poll cards to thou­sands of cit­i­zens ahead of the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

How­ev­er, TTPost man­ag­ing di­rec­tor George Alex­is has as­sured the pub­lic that the de­liv­ery of poll cards will not be af­fect­ed—and that no work­er is be­ing forced to per­form du­ties out­side their job de­scrip­tion.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, TTP­WU pres­i­dent David Forbes claimed many work­ers cur­rent­ly act­ing in su­per­vi­so­ry roles are be­ing told to re­turn to their orig­i­nal po­si­tions as mail or de­liv­ery of­fi­cers—a move he de­scribed as “dis­re­spect­ful and un­fair,” es­pe­cial­ly since some have been act­ing in these high­er roles for over two years with­out for­mal ap­point­ments.

“They’ve been work­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly in these roles. Now, man­age­ment is ask­ing them to step down, just to as­sist with poll card de­liv­ery. It’s de­mor­al­is­ing and un­just,” Forbes said.

Forbes claimed TTPost has al­so failed to fill the re­quired 418 board-ap­proved de­liv­ery of­fi­cer po­si­tions, leav­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion se­vere­ly un­der­staffed. The re­sult, he said, is mail de­lays, em­ploy­ee burnout.

“This is why peo­ple aren’t get­ting their mail on time,” he ex­plained.

“De­liv­ery of­fi­cers are be­ing asked to cov­er two or three routes. Now, they’re al­so ex­pect­ed to meet tight poll card de­liv­ery dead­lines. It’s un­re­al­is­tic and chaot­ic.”

Forbes warned that fail­ure to de­liv­er poll cards on time could lead to con­fu­sion and frus­tra­tion among vot­ers, putting added pres­sure on the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) and po­ten­tial­ly un­der­min­ing the elec­toral process.

“Peo­ple blame the post­man —the last-mile work­er—not the man­age­ment. But the re­al is­sue is lack of man­pow­er. We’ve had past elec­tions where poll cards went un­de­liv­ered and were re­turned to the EBC. It could hap­pen again,” he said.

How­ev­er, Alex­is de­nied union claims that TTPost is over­work­ing staff and re­as­sign­ing them to roles they no longer hold.

“I to­tal­ly re­fute that. The work­ers are per­form­ing the du­ties as­signed to their cur­rent po­si­tions —a de­liv­ery of­fi­cer is do­ing de­liv­ery of­fi­cer du­ties, and a mail of­fi­cer is han­dling mail sort­ing,” Alex­is said.

On claims TTPost is un­pre­pared to dis­trib­ute poll cards ahead of the elec­tion, Alex­is said, “We re­ceived the poll cards on the 14th. We were ready to be­gin de­liv­ery the next day, which was yes­ter­day (Tues­day). We don’t pro­duce the poll cards—as soon as we get them from the EBC, we dis­patch them.”

He em­pha­sised that TTPost has nev­er missed a poll card de­liv­ery since tak­ing on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in 1999, adding con­tin­gency plans were in place if need­ed.