KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Is the Gov­ern­ment seek­ing to close down the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices (TSTT) as it did with the Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny (Petrotrin) back in 2018?It was among sev­er­al ques­tions posed by Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Sun­day Me­dia Brief­ing.

Padarath, the UNC’s shad­ow min­is­ter of pub­lic util­i­ties, said a pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion ar­tic­u­lat­ed its plan to pri­va­tise TSTT.

How­ev­er, the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP) Gen­er­al Elec­tion vic­to­ry in 2010 thwart­ed its ef­forts. He said the PP met TSTT in an un­prof­itable state and ad­dressed the is­sues.

The com­pa­ny went on to record mil­lions in prof­its an­nu­al­ly.

How­ev­er, since the PNM took over in 2015, there was a steady de­cline lead­ing to the point where job loss­es are on the hori­zon. Padarath said some man­age­ment play­ers who over­saw the un­prof­itable days have re­turned. He wants to know what were rec­om­men­da­tions it gave to the Gov­ern­ment to save the com­pa­ny.
“We are see­ing where TSTT was prof­itable un­der Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as Prime Min­is­ter dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2010-2015: reg­is­tered mil­lions of dol­lars in prof­its on the books of TSTT.

The PNM as­sumes of­fice at the end of 2015, and then you con­tin­ue to see the com­pa­ny de­cline to where we are to­day in the red. Is it that the com­pa­ny is be­ing pur­pose­ly dri­ven in­to the ground to en­sure that the com­pa­ny is not prof­itable, the com­pa­ny is not vi­able, so, there­fore, the Gov­ern­ment can take the po­si­tion that they will pri­vate and send home work­ers?”
While Padarath ad­mits that Voice Over In­ter­net Pro­to­cols and oth­er tech­nol­o­gy im­pact­ed the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­dus­try, it did not hap­pen yes­ter­day.

He said the Gov­ern­ment took a hands-off ap­proach to the is­sues at the com­pa­ny, with Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les hid­ing be­hind TSTT CEO Lisa Agard. He said gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy comes from the Cab­i­net, but what was de­vel­op­ing might be its at­tempt to pri­va­tise TSTT.
“Their at­tempt is re­al­ly to pri­va­tise TSTT by de­mon­is­ing the work­ers in terms of re­struc­tur­ing, and we saw that hap­pen­ing with Petrotrin. We saw all of the chal­lenges in terms of the de­mon­is­ing of work­ers at Petrotrin even though we had the as­sur­ance that Petrotrin was not go­ing to be closed down.”

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray said the Gov­ern­ment pre­sides over the worst eco­nom­ic cri­sis T&T ex­pe­ri­enced in decades. He said thou­sands of small busi­ness­es shut down, re­sult­ing in mas­sive job loss­es over the last six years.
He said a re­port sub­mit­ted by the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board two weeks ago through a court or­der shows that con­tri­bu­tions fell by 21.8 per cent be­tween 2015 and 2020.

The re­port showed that there was a de­cline of 112,729 in­di­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions.
“That means, ef­fec­tive­ly that 112,729 work­ers, each sup­port­ing fam­i­ly who are send­ing chil­dren to school, were put on the bread­line un­der the watch of this PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion,” Paray said.

He said this in­di­cat­ed that the ac­tu­al un­em­ploy­ment rate stood at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 per cent, where one in every five work­ers are home.