PSA Says Retirees Nearing Payout of 10% Arrears

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) is promis­ing re­tirees that the union is near­ing fi­nal­i­sa­tion of their “10 per­cent” agree­ment.

In a post to Face­book late on Sun­day evening, PSA Pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas an­nounced, “We are now on our way to sign­ing off on a date on which your full ar­rears at 10% will be paid.”

Thomas said these dis­cus­sions will be in tan­dem with on­go­ing talks re­gard­ing the re­main­der of ar­rears owed to pub­lic ser­vants fol­low­ing the De­cem­ber 2, “10 per­cent” agree­ment signed with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO).

“As we progress ne­go­ti­a­tions for mem­bers of the Civ­il Ser­vice, Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties sub­ject to the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Act and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, re­tirees will re­ceive all of their ar­rears,” Thomas said.

She added, “When the PSA re­ject­ed 4%, we al­so re­ject­ed a $4000 buy­out of ar­rears owed to re­tirees.”

At­tempts to con­tact Thomas for fur­ther de­tails, in­clud­ing when the next meet­ing with CPO Com­man­der Dr Daryl Din­di­al is ex­pect­ed, were un­suc­cess­ful.

This an­nounce­ment will be wel­comed news for re­tirees who have been con­sis­tent­ly seek­ing up­dates from the PSA re­gard­ing their ben­e­fits.

Pen­sion ben­e­fits in the pub­lic ser­vice are di­rect­ly linked to salary scales of the pe­ri­od in which a pub­lic of­fi­cer served.

Since the 10% in­crease cov­ers the pe­ri­ods 2014–2016 and 2017–2019, any pub­lic ser­vant who re­tired dur­ing or af­ter those years is en­ti­tled to a re­cal­cu­la­tion of their re­tire­ment ben­e­fits.

Re­tirees are al­so el­i­gi­ble for back pay for the months they were still in ac­tive ser­vice dur­ing the 2014–2019 pe­ri­od.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the key dif­fer­ence be­tween re­tirees and ac­tive of­fi­cers is that cer­tain “non-cash” op­tions for the pay­ment of ar­rears will not ap­ply, as re­tirees no longer have leave bal­ances for the State to buy out.

This means there may be less “non cash” op­tions avail­able to re­tirees com­pared to ac­tive work­ers.

CPO Dr Daryl Din­di­al could not be reached for com­ment as Guardian Me­dia sought clar­i­ty on when next his of­fice will be meet­ing with the PSA.

The dis­pute over non-cash op­tions emerged im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the 10 per cent agree­ment was signed on De­cem­ber 2, 2025, and cen­tres on how the re­main­ing $3.8 bil­lion in back pay will be paid, be­yond the ini­tial ad­vance is­sued in De­cem­ber.

PSA Pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas in­sists the man­date from her mem­bers is for 100% cash pay­ments. How­ev­er, both the CPO and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo have said that non cash op­tions must form part of the dis­cus­sion due to the coun­try’s cur­rent fi­nan­cial po­si­tion.

Ne­go­ti­a­tions on this spe­cif­ic is­sue were sched­uled to re­sume in Jan­u­ary 2026.