Renu­ka Singh

An in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team has been charged with de­ter­min­ing the fu­ture of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) and one mem­ber of that team, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, does not pre­dict a “deep dive” in­to the op­er­a­tions.

Young gave de­tails on the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to de­ter­mine how to move for­ward with TSTT at Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing.

He said that it was “pre­ma­ture” at this stage to de­ter­mine whether the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to di­vest its share of the com­pa­ny.

“We need to see what is the best way for­ward for it and what is best for the tax­pay­ers,” he said.

“Let us start by get­ting in there and get­ting an un­der­stand­ing. I don’t get the im­pres­sion that we go­ing to be do­ing a deep dive, we are go­ing to be look­ing at it, get­ting an idea of what the sta­tus is and what needs to hap­pen, mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions,” Young said.

In re­cent weeks, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union, with sup­port from the Joint Trade Union Move­ment, has called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the TSTT op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing ex­ec­u­tive de­ci­sions to fund Am­plia, de­ci­sions tak­en by the board and the com­pa­ny’s failed five-year pro­jec­tion.

The CWU marched, lit can­dles and protest­ed the de­ci­sion by TSTT to re­struc­ture the or­gan­i­sa­tion, which will lead to more jobs cuts at the com­pa­ny.

Young said that the union would be part of the dis­cus­sions go­ing for­ward.

“I be­lieve they may have met, or they are sup­posed to meet with a cou­ple of the min­is­ters al­ready. So there is no is­sue with us what­so­ev­er, ex­clud­ing the unions,” he said.

Gov­ern­ment cur­rent­ly owns some 51 per cent of TSTT while Ca­ble and Wire­less own the mi­nor­i­ty 49 per cent share.

“One of the dis­cus­sions that came up at Cab­i­net was with re­spect to TSTT and a de­ci­sion was tak­en by Cab­i­net to ap­point a sub-Cab­i­net com­mit­tee to take a look at TSTT’s cur­rent po­si­tion, what sta­tus are they in now,” Young said.

The sub-com­mit­tee will al­so be tasked with de­ter­min­ing whether TSTT is “fit for pur­pose” and to make rec­om­men­da­tions on the fu­ture of TSTT to Cab­i­net. Chief among the sub-com­mit­tee’s tasks is to de­ter­mine TSTT’s dol­lar val­ue.

The sub-cab­i­net com­mit­tee will be chaired by Plan­ning Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is and in­cludes Young, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert and Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Has­sel Bac­chus.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Op­po­si­tion Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath said this move by the Gov­ern­ment is a pre­cur­sor to the sale of TSTT. He said that the es­tab­lish­ment of a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee is “too late and it will ac­com­plish noth­ing but sell­ing off the as­sets of TSTT to friends and fi­nanciers of the PNM.”

Padarath de­scribed it as “dis­turb­ing” that the Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee had no spe­cif­ic terms of ref­er­ence and time­line to com­pile its re­port.

“The an­nounce­ment to­day gave very lit­tle de­tails and is shroud­ed in se­cre­cy,” he said and cit­ed the pur­chase of Massy Com­mu­ni­ca­tion for over $255 mil­lion by TSTT, say­ing it was “done in a very clan­des­tine way as well and that his­to­ry was re­peat­ing it­self at TSTT.”

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