Ra­mona Ram­di­al

As PSA work­ers be­gin to un­pack their quat­tros and shak shaks to kick off their 10% parang sea­son, the TTPSS­WA, CGW­TU, and TTUTA open­ly dis­played their readi­ness to re­ceive the Gov­ern­ment’s Christ­mas gen­eros­i­ty. PSA pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas is con­vinced that her mem­bers will be re­ceiv­ing their cash be­fore Christ­mas.

CGW­TU pres­i­dent Er­mine De Bique-Meade took a cue from Thomas, de­mand­ing “we need cash!” by De­cem­ber 22nd, af­ter her union signed for a mea­gre 4% in April with the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment. TTUTA al­so signed with the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment for a mea­gre 5% and “sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion on the im­ple­men­ta­tion time­line.”

Some of my for­mer teach­ing col­leagues asked me if the funds bud­get­ed for their new salaries and back­pay will be re-pur­posed to set­tle with the PSA. I still don’t know. TTPSS­WA pres­i­dent Ish­mael Pitt and oth­er union lead­ers took is­sue with Min­is­ter Clyde El­der’s state­ments, as they al­leged that the PSA was re­ward­ed for sup­port­ing the UNC dur­ing GE2025.

Last Fri­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo con­firmed that PSA mem­bers would re­ceive their back­pay be­fore Christ­mas. All the oth­er unions with mere­ly “rat­i­fied” agree­ments will re­ceive their mon­ey with­in the first quar­ter of 2026. This is cer­tain­ly a mat­ter of the “Naughty” (unions set­tling be­fore elec­tions) and the “Nice” (the PSA). Per­haps even the PSA pres­i­dent was too op­ti­mistic, as the CPO men­tioned some “non-cash” op­tions to “min­imise cash flow im­pact on the state.”

I was look­ing for­ward to de­tails on the FDI se­cured by Min­is­ters Jear­lean John, Sean Sobers, and Sad­dam Ho­sein af­ter they vis­it­ed the UAE and Bahrain. Min­is­ter John men­tioned some dis­cus­sions on port in­fra­struc­ture, health­care, and tourism, but noth­ing de­fin­i­tive. That was dis­ap­point­ing. Per­haps the ex­cit­ing de­tails are yet to be re­leased.

There was ac­tu­al­ly much more promis­ing news at home with the re­sump­tion of drilling af­ter 19 years in the Cen­tral Block by Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration with the Cara­pal Ridge-3 well. If this ex­plo­ration fa­cil­i­tates the re­al­i­sa­tion of a pro­ject­ed 50 mil­lion stan­dard cu­bic feet of gas per day from the area, it could in­vite fur­ther in­vest­ment in our on­shore gas fields. How­ev­er, we are re­mind­ed by Methanex pres­i­dent and CEO, Rich Sum­n­er, that the sus­tain­abil­i­ty and growth of our gas sup­plies “hinges on the abil­i­ty to de­vel­op cross-bor­der sup­plies with Venezuela.”

So per­haps the best move to­wards that goal in the last week was the in­stal­la­tion of the radar in To­ba­go! Why? How are we go­ing to get an Amer­i­can-friend­ly Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment that will se­cure us ex­plo­ration li­cences for the cross-bor­der fields and re­move the OFAC li­cence re­quire­ment? We have ob­vi­ous cash flow prob­lems in our coun­try. The on­ly dis­cernible “game chang­er” seems to be regime change in Venezuela.

If Pres­i­dent Trump con­vinces Pres­i­dent Maduro to demit of­fice, he can com­pare his FI­FA Peace Prize with Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do’s No­bel. I will be ec­sta­t­ic if some­one can con­vince me that a change in our na­tion­al for­tunes can be found else­where. The Fi­nance Bill brought to Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, with its in­tro­duc­tion and in­creas­es in cer­tain tax­es and fines, can­not be con­sid­ered imag­i­na­tive rev­enue gen­er­a­tion.

Does the Re­fin­ery Re­ac­ti­va­tion Com­mit­tee, which met with PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal last Thurs­day, have an an­swer to the search for an­oth­er “game chang­er?” If it is go­ing to take three years, when does that pe­ri­od start? Will it be gen­er­at­ing forex by 2028? Who will be op­er­at­ing it?

In my col­umn of Sep­tem­ber 22nd, 2025, ti­tled “An An­ti­com­pet­i­tive Agen­da,” I con­sid­ered our coun­try’s biggest forex con­sumers, led by Aven­ta T&T Ltd with its undis­put­ed hege­mo­ny in the lo­cal phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tor and the fail­ure by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment, the Fair Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC), or the Chem­istry Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion to pre­vent it.

I was pleased that last week’s Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee per­mit­ted Pri­vate Phar­ma­cy Re­tail Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Glen­wayne Su­chit the op­por­tu­ni­ty to air the strug­gles of the SMEs in the face of the gal­lop­ing mo­nop­oly. This has re­ceived the at­ten­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter, and she has promised to dis­man­tle it. This will mean wider op­tions and low­er prices for the con­sumers. I am hap­py to have giv­en my in­put on this mat­ter in our na­tion’s best in­ter­ests.

I note the suave move by Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son to choose for­mer UNC Sen­a­tor Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, for the Sen­ate bench to de­bate the Home In­va­sion Bill last Fri­day. UNC loy­al­ists will know his val­ue but will not ad­mit it. This ap­point­ment con­firms that the PNM is re­build­ing and re­group­ing for the LGE in 2027 and the GE in 2030. Will Lar­ry be the PNM can­di­date for Tu­na­puna in 2030? Best wish­es to him on his po­lit­i­cal jour­ney!

Last week, we al­so re­ceived con­fir­ma­tion about a phone call be­tween Pres­i­dents Trump and Maduro. Maduro claimed it was “re­spect­ful and cor­dial,” but Trump was less forth­com­ing. It was re­port­ed that he de­liv­ered an ul­ti­ma­tum to Maduro. Fol­low­ing the call, an­oth­er al­leged drug boat was blown up, with four more killed. I tend to be­lieve that Maduro may have over­es­ti­mat­ed the “cor­dial­i­ty” of the call, if not com­plete­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed it to his peo­ple, as they hope for peace, and he hopes to have one last navi­dad as Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent.