Khan: No 15 per cent pay cut

Energy Minister Franklin Khan PHOTO BY SUREASH CHOLAI
Energy Minister Franklin Khan PHOTO BY SUREASH CHOLAI

ENERGY Minister Franklin Khan says the Oilfield Workers’ Trade Union’s (OWTU) alternative plan for Petrotrin does not include a 15 per cent pay cut for employees as has been reported. He was responding to an urgent question in Senate yesterday posed by Opposition Senator Wade Mark.

He said OWTU presented to the Petrotrin board a proposal called “Saving Petrotrin: OWTU’s alternative plan” but nowhere in the plan indicated a 15 per cent pay cut. “And the article in the Express (newspaper) today is also misleading.”

He said what was proposed was to ask bond holders on US $850 million bullet payment to refinance for a three-to-five-year period with an interest rate pegged at US five-year treasury bond yield or 2.5 per cent plus one per cent risk period compared to current bond interest of 9.75.

He added the US five-year bond interest was for prime borrowers and people who will certainly repay the loan. “So that is a non-starter to start with.”

He said the second option was to issue local bonds of US $850 million with interest rate of 3.75 per cent and Petrotrin workers could buy back bonds with a ten to 15 per cent monthly salary contribution.

“But Petrotrin still has to pay the full salary for you to invest to buy back bonds. So even this, which is flimsy at best, is still not a 15 per cent wage cut.”

Mark asked if the Government was considering negotiations with bond holders to having the US $850 million owed and due in August next year refinanced. Khan responded: “Obviously because Petrotrin cannot come up with a check for $850 million US nor can the Minister of Finance. So we obviously have to talk refinancing and those discussions are in a very preliminary stage.”

Also yesterday Mark posed a question to Labour Minister Jennifer Baptiste-Primus about retrenchment exercise at Trinidad Cement Limited (TCL) which left 16 people on the breadline and reportedly there was not consultation with the representative union, the OWTU.

Baptiste-Primus responded her ministry received correspondence from TCL yesterday and a letter dated September 11 which informed her about the retrenchment of the 16 employees on the grounds of redundancy and using the last in, first out criteria.

She said the letter reported the company had been engaging with OWTU on urgent issue of redundancies in good faith since September 2017 with a view to avoid the possibility or mitigating the effects of retrenchment. “However these attempts have proved unsuccessful.”

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