GPTWU workers give Govt 1-week ultimatum for pension payout

The Guyana Postal and Telecommunications Workers Unions (GPTWU) has given the Guyana Government a one-week ultimatum to resolve the decades-old issue regarding the payment of pension to retired workers of the Guyana Telecommunications Corporation (GTC) and the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company Limited (GTT).
When the GTC was privatised in 1990, the workers who stayed on under GTT were promised that they would be paid their benefits when they retired from the telecommunications giant – an Atlantic Tele-Network (ATN) majority-owned company – as if they were in the public service.
However, those former GTC/GTT workers who retired after years of service under

both companies are still trying to get their correct outstanding entitlement.
As such, during a press briefing on Wednesday, they called on Government to take actions immediately to resolve the matter, threatening to move to the court if nothing is done.
“We’re giving the Minister of Finance and the Government of Guyana, an opportunity once more to have dialogue with the union to address this issue. [But] we’re not prepared to wait indefinitely… we’re prepared to take the necessary actions to ensure that this issue is resolved… We expect at least a call from some senior official within the next week or so for us to sit down and have dialogue… if not we will seek legal advice and if we have to protest, we’ll protest,” President of GPTWU, Harold Shepherd asserted.
One of the things the union is looking forward to from Government is the establishment of a special committee in accordance with a 2014 recommendation, which the union believes is the way forward in resolving the issue.
“We would like to ask the President to appoint, as was recommended in 2014, a Special Select Committee to bring about a resolution to this long outstanding issue. We have been languishing approximately two decades and [it] is our opinion that this resolution is not for the Minister of Finance [Winston Jordan] or the Ministry, it lies in a special select committee,” retired worker Lennox Skeete said.
He added too that they would also recommend that Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge and Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) Godfrey Statia be included in that committee “because of their involvement with this pension issue some years ago”.
Documents shared with the media revealed a correspondence from the Privatisation Unit to the Finance Ministry back in 2000 detailing excerpts from the 1990 sale agreement which states: “…You will be continued in employment with GT&T and your service will be treated as continuous and unbroken and other conditions of service will not be less favourable than what you presently enjoy. You are guaranteed employment with GT&T for a period of eighteen (18) months, subject, of course, to the right of the management to dismiss or discharge you for cause. These amounts will become due and payable to you when you finally retire from the service of GT&T, or your employment with GT&T is terminated, in circumstances in which, had you been employed in the Public Service, you would be entitled to Pension and Gratuity under Section 8 of the said Act. The liability to pay the above benefits, when they become due and payable will be transferred to the Government in the Ministry of Finance.”
However, over the years, GTC/GTT pensioners received a mere $22,000 instead of a minimum of $90,000 or a maximum of $700,000 in accordance with their last salary base. According to the pensioners, although the Finance Ministry had adjusted the rates back in 2017, it was still inadequate to what they are actually entitled to.
Furthermore, the retired workers also called out Finance Minister Winston Jordan over comments he made, claiming that the matter has been resolved.
Insisting that this was not the case, another pensioner, David Wallace, challenged the Finance Ministry to proffer proof that the matter was resolved. Wallace further called the utterance of the Minister “disrespectful, untrue and insulting”. He noted that it is the retired workers who are suffering.
“There are people within the Government who knows what is taking place and it is our perception that the Ministry of Finance does not have the knowledge and skill to look at this matter, and because of this we are suffering,” Wallace asserted.
The GPTWU also revealed that they had written to President David Granger back in November 2018, appealing for his intervention to have the matter resolved. In December, Public Affairs Minister Dawn Hastings-Williams acknowledged receipt of the letter, informing the union that the President asked that the letter be forwarded to the Finance Minister “for action”.