Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has urged T&TEC work­ers to “hold strain,” af­ter they staged a protest yes­ter­day de­mand­ing the res­ig­na­tion of the com­pa­ny’s board of di­rec­tors.

“The new board of T&TEC will go be­fore the Cab­i­net on Thurs­day. There­fore, I ask the com­pa­ny and the em­ploy­ees to hold strain, change is com­ing. Re­demp­tion day is at hand,” he said in re­sponse to the work­ers’ de­mands.

The protest out­side T&TEC’s head of­fice on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain, was led by Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) sec­ond vice pres­i­dent Reesa Ram­lo­gan-Jod­ha.

She said board mem­bers had done noth­ing to im­prove the work­ers’ lives.

“The work­ers of T&TEC spoke on April 28. The work­ers of T&TEC, we vot­ed, we vot­ed out the old ad­min­is­tra­tion and we vot­ed a new ad­min­is­tra­tion,” she said.

The board, ap­point­ed in May 2024, in­cludes Frances Lum Young, Ayasha Nick­ie, chair­man Rom­ney Thomas, deputy chair­man An­tho­ny Peyson, An­drew Alves, Janet Richards and Raphael Ajod­hia.

“So many work­ers are act­ing in va­cant po­si­tions and what you do is you just keep hid­ing the act­ing let­ters, but you putting them to act be­cause the work­ers in T&TEC un­der­stand that this is an es­sen­tial ser­vice and if called up­on to act ... we have to act,” Ram­lo­gan-Jod­ha said.

She said work­ers had to use the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act to ob­tain in­for­ma­tion on their act­ing ap­point­ments be­cause man­age­ment re­fused to pro­vide it.

Ram­lo­gan-Jod­ha al­so called for the res­ig­na­tion of chief hu­man re­sources of­fi­cer (CHRO) Carmela Sar­jeant.

“In this sit­u­a­tion, if you have a CHRO who is not meet­ing with the union, then what you are do­ing is cur­tail­ing the en­tire process,” she said.

Ram­lo­gan-Jod­ha al­so claimed there had been a uni­lat­er­al at­tempt to change the terms and con­di­tions of the med­ical plan.

“What she did was to sur­rep­ti­tious­ly have a meet­ing, no in­vi­ta­tion to the union, and then write to the union af­ter to say we had a meet­ing, you were not in at­ten­dance and this is the out­come of the meet­ing,” she said.

Ram­lo­gan-Jod­ha ac­knowl­edged there are chal­lenges with the plan and it needs to be re­viewed but main­tained there is a process.

She said there are prob­lems with the med­ical plan be­cause T&TEC work­ers are still on 2014 salaries and the cost of med­ical care has in­creased since then.

“You have peo­ple who are re­tir­ing and in re­cent times we have been see­ing a lot of res­ig­na­tions com­ing in from T&TEC as well and when it is you have this hap­pen­ing is be­cause the con­tri­bu­tions even­tu­al­ly will not be able to fund the med­ical plan,” she said on be­half of the pro­test­ers.

OW­TU al­so led a protest out­side the In­dus­tri­al Court on St Vin­cent Street call­ing for the re­moval of In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Chair­man Lawrence Achong.

Kevin Ju­lian said work­ers of T&TEC, Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion and steel work­ers.

“We are out here be­cause we do not be­lieve that we would have a fair day in the court once Lar­ry Achong re­mains in the court,” he ex­plained.

In Feb­ru­ary last year, the Court of Ap­peal up­held a case from the OW­TU over a de­ci­sion by an In­dus­tri­al Court pan­el led by Achong on a col­lec­tive agree­ment for T&TEC work­ers be­tween 2015 and 2017.

The Ap­peal Court ruled that the pan­el wrong­ly con­sid­ered ev­i­dence not pre­sent­ed by ei­ther of the par­ties.