No guarantee for UTT employees

After a 90-minute meeting between Education Minister Anthony Garcia, a team from the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) and the Oilfields’ Workers Trade Union (OWTU) at the Education Ministry yesterday, there was no guarantee that the UTT workers’ jobs would be saved.

“Just as we went in, the same way we came back out. There is absolutely no guarantee that they will not come after your jobs. They gave their guarantee, but we have seen the Government go back on that guarantee,” president of the OWTU Ancel Roget told UTT employees as they protested outside the ministry.

Government’s budgetary allocation of $200 million this year, a reduction of $100 million from last year, has resulted in the university’s board trying to cut back on the number of staff.

Roget said Government was using the wrong approach for the economic situation.

“You must know, as workers, the people must know as citizens that this government is very myopic, bankrupt of ideas, and the only way they can find themselves out to balance the books, they will cut, and cut, and cut.

“If this cut had nothing to do with people, you would not have a problem. When they have to talk about cutbacks and people losing their jobs, then we have a social explosion in the making in the country. For every job that you lose is a family that is displaced, a community that is impacted, and the social fabric that is impacted in the country.”

He said the shortsightedness of that approach was to balance revenue with expenditure.

Roget said the only people who would benefit from the cutback and who would survive were the people who “stole and put away their millions, and those who formed the one per cent as they cut back.

“Imagine sending you home, but wanting you to pay more tax. That is an oxymoron. You hardly have money to pay now, but (they are) sending you home with no money and want you to pay more tax.

“Our position is clear that there is a need for the university, and any type of cutbacks will impact on the university’s ability to deliver and will not only affect the workers, it would affect the progress and development of the country.”

Roget said he was informed that the cutbacks were because 70 per cent of UTT’s expenditure went towards paying salaries, with no other explanation.

It was alleged that UTT president Sarim N Al-Zubaidy was earning a substantial salary each month, while employees have not had an increase in their salaries since 2007.

“They are talking about sacrifice, but they are talking about your necks, not theirs – so you will be running around like headless chickens. If there is any sacrifice at all, they have to send back that president they have and put in place a local. Finance Minister Colm Imbert said he negotiated some reduction in the salary of the president, so what the hell that president salary started off as? A reduction from what to what?

“A university must have a purpose, and to have a purpose you must have people. Our position is not one job must go. We must band together to send them home before they send us home,” Roget said.

He said the workers were scheduled to meet with the minister on December 6. Before that meeting, Roget said, nobody must be threatened or sent home. He added that if the university was in trouble today, it was not the workers’ fault.