Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) has sub­mit­ted a coun­ter­pro­pos­al to the State, seek­ing to have part of the non-cash com­po­nent of the back­pay owed to its mem­bers pro­vid­ed through food cards, fu­el as­sis­tance and oth­er ben­e­fits.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the union has for­mal­ly re­spond­ed to the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer’s (CPO) “best and fi­nal of­fer”, which pro­posed that 40 per cent of the out­stand­ing ar­rears be paid in cash and the re­main­ing 60 per cent through non-cash ben­e­fits.

How­ev­er, the PSA is re­port­ed­ly seek­ing the re­verse arrange­ment, re­quest­ing that 60 per cent of the set­tle­ment be paid in cash and 40 per cent through “de­ferred cash” mea­sures.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, CPO Com­man­der Dr Daryl Din­di­al de­clined to con­firm the de­tails of the union’s re­sponse, say­ing it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate to dis­cuss the on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions be­fore fur­ther dis­cus­sions are held with the PSA.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia has re­li­ably learnt that among the op­tions pro­posed by the union are food cards and fu­el vouch­ers as part of the non-cash por­tion of the set­tle­ment pack­age.

The pro­pos­al could spark de­bate over whether such ben­e­fits can tru­ly be clas­si­fied as “non-cash” com­pen­sa­tion.

Of­fi­cials at the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices ex­plained to Guardian Me­dia that food cards are gen­er­al­ly front-loaded, mean­ing the funds must be made avail­able be­fore the cards can be is­sued and used.

Sim­i­lar­ly, fleet and fu­el card pro­grammes in Trinidad and To­ba­go can op­er­ate as ei­ther pre­paid or post­paid fa­cil­i­ties, de­pend­ing on the fi­nan­cial stand­ing of the com­pa­ny in­volved and the arrange­ments ne­go­ti­at­ed with the is­suer.

In­dus­try sources ex­plained that while larg­er busi­ness­es with es­tab­lished cred­it his­to­ries of­ten qual­i­fy for post­paid fa­cil­i­ties, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of lo­cal com­pa­nies utilise pre­paid arrange­ments that re­quire funds to be loaded on­to the cards be­fore pur­chas­es can be made.

Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact PSA Pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas were un­suc­cess­ful. Calls and mes­sages went unan­swered yes­ter­day.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo was asked if the food and fu­el cards re­quest is some­thing the State could af­ford. How­ev­er, re­spond­ing via What­sApp, Tan­coo said, “no com­ment.”

For­mer PSA head Wat­son Duke al­so de­clined to com­ment when asked if he be­lieves the union’s lat­est re­quest was prac­ti­cal and vi­able.

In May, CPO Din­di­al pre­sent­ed what he de­scribed as the State’s “best and fi­nal of­fer” to set­tle the out­stand­ing ar­rears.

Un­der that pro­pos­al, 40 per cent of the back­pay would be paid in cash, while the re­main­ing 60 per cent would be de­liv­ered through a range of non-cash ben­e­fits. These in­clud­ed as­sis­tance with mort­gage and rental oblig­a­tions through the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Bank, set­tle­ment of statu­to­ry tax li­a­bil­i­ties, tu­ition pay­ments at state in­sti­tu­tions, med­ical ben­e­fits, ve­hi­cle-re­lat­ed tax con­ces­sions and oth­er forms of fi­nan­cial re­lief. The Gov­ern­ment al­so pro­posed that re­tirees re­ceive ar­rears owed for the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2018 en­tire­ly in cash.

The PSA re­ject­ed the pro­pos­al, main­tain­ing that back­pay rep­re­sents earned in­come rather than a gift or in­cen­tive.

The union al­so ar­gued that pub­lic ser­vants have wide­ly dif­fer­ing per­son­al cir­cum­stances and would not ben­e­fit equal­ly from the con­di­tion­al arrange­ments be­ing pro­posed. It not­ed that many work­ers do not have HDC mort­gages, rental oblig­a­tions or tax li­a­bil­i­ties that could be off­set through the pack­age.

On May 23, Din­di­al gave the PSA four weeks to re­spond to the of­fer, while in­di­cat­ing that the State’s fis­cal con­straints lim­it­ed its abil­i­ty to ac­com­mo­date sev­er­al of the union’s de­mands.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the union re­spond­ed with­in the stip­u­lat­ed time­frame and is now await­ing fur­ther cor­re­spon­dence from the CPO.

The dis­pute stems from a land­mark agree­ment signed on De­cem­ber 2, 2025, un­der which the PSA se­cured a 10 per cent wage in­crease for pub­lic ser­vants across two bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods span­ning 2014 to 2019. The set­tle­ment cre­at­ed a to­tal back­pay li­a­bil­i­ty es­ti­mat­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3.8 bil­lion.

Ahead of Christ­mas, the Gov­ern­ment dis­trib­uted a $500 mil­lion ad­vance pay­ment on the ar­rears on De­cem­ber 23, 2025.

The re­lief pack­age was paid as flat-rate, tax-de­duct­ed cash sums based on em­ploy­ees’ length of ser­vice. Work­ers em­ployed through­out the 2014-2023 pe­ri­od re­ceived a net pay­ment of $20,000, those em­ployed from 2014 to 2025 re­ceived $14,000, while em­ploy­ees who joined the ser­vice dur­ing 2025 re­ceived $10,000.

The re­main­ing bal­ances of their ar­rears are still to be set­tled.