T&TEC settles COLA backpay with unions

SHAS­TRI BOODAN

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) has set­tled out­stand­ing Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) pay­ments with trade unions rep­re­sent­ing work­ers at the state util­i­ty com­pa­ny.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, T&TEC Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Ian Ram­rat­tan said the com­mis­sion had reached agree­ments with the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) and the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) on CO­LA back­pay.

“This Board has re­stored col­lab­o­ra­tive man­age­ment to the Com­mis­sion and, af­ter fruit­ful ne­go­ti­a­tions with the var­i­ous em­ploy­ee bar­gain­ing bod­ies, set­tled Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (CO­LA) back­pay for the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion (EPA) and the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) from 2024 and 2015 to 2025 re­spec­tive­ly,” Ram­rat­tan said.

He added that T&TEC had al­so re­solved a long-stand­ing salary is­sue af­fect­ing em­ploy­ees rep­re­sent­ed by the OW­TU and the Se­nior Staff As­so­ci­a­tion (SSA).

“We al­so com­plet­ed long-stand­ing salary dis­par­i­ty be­tween the OW­TU and the Se­nior Staff As­so­ci­a­tion (SSA) by restor­ing par­i­ty be­tween these two groups of em­ploy­ees,” he said.

Ram­rat­tan said the Board has al­so been en­gag­ing work­ers di­rect­ly to hear con­cerns about work­ing con­di­tions and op­er­a­tional is­sues.

“Em­ploy­ees have ex­pressed their grat­i­tude and sup­port for our out­reach. We have heard, re­peat­ed­ly, that pre­vi­ous Boards did not pri­ori­tise meet­ing the em­ploy­ees on the ground. This Board is fo­cused on im­prov­ing T&TEC's ser­vice de­liv­ery by de­vel­op­ing our Hu­man Re­sources, and these ses­sions are crit­i­cal to that ap­proach,” he said.

T&TEC is cel­e­brat­ing its 80th an­niver­sary this year and will launch sev­er­al ini­tia­tives to mark the mile­stone.

Ram­rat­tan said the com­mis­sion will of­fi­cial­ly launch the SPARK pro­gramme, which stands for School Part­ner­ship for Aware­ness Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and Knowl­edge, on Sun­day.

“Sec­ondary school stu­dents will be in­tro­duced to en­er­gy lit­er­a­cy, con­ser­va­tion and ef­fi­cien­cy, elec­tric­i­ty safe­ty and ca­reers in the elec­tric­i­ty in­dus­try. We have al­so part­nered with the Car­bon Ze­ro In­sti­tute of Trinidad and To­ba­go to host a sec­ondary schools AI En­er­gy Hackathon. We will al­so soon re­lease a his­tor­i­cal mi­ni doc­u­men­tary on T&TEC at 80,” he said.