GTC pensioners maintain call for more money
Written by Kwesi Isles Friday, 09 September 2011 12:34


The GTC pensioners marched on Labour Day 2011

Former employees of the Guyana Telecommunications Corporation (GTC), now GT&T, on Friday called on the government to renegotiate the pensions that have been offered to them following their departure from the once wholly state-owned entity. GTC was in 1991 privatised with government retaining 20 percent ownership and workers were told that there years of service would have been transferred to the new company.

At a news conference called by the Guyana Postal and Telecommunications Workers Union (GPTWU), one-time GTC Personnel and Labour Relations Manager Clifford Blackett stated that the majority of the roughly 46 persons still affected are highly trained individuals who are now being offered the minimum pension. “Nowhere did we recognise that when our time would have come to depart the now GT&T that our pension with the Ministry of Finance would have been relegated to the minimum pension, a pension that given to the lowest categories of workers … cleaners and watchmen et cetera,” Blackett stated. “Among us are managers, deputy managers and well-qualified engineers who would have spent years studying locally and abroad to hold the positions that they held with GTC and to give this country a satisfactory service.”

Blackett said they are dissatisfied with the amount they receive when many of their colleagues in the public service are receiving as much as “five times’’ that amount. He indicated to reporters that they are currently receiving GUY$16,000 per month and that he believed that figure should be at least GUY$50,000 per month. In 2004 the government drafted a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to address the former GTC employees’ issues but not every detail was up to the workers’ liking. “Had we accepted carte blanche the Memorandum of Understanding we would have left a whole lot of people dissatisfied. All that we’ve been asking of this government is to look in to some reasonable and justifiable pension that is commensurate with our colleagues in public service employment,” Blackett said.

According to the former manager, there was some GUY$500M in GTC’s coffers at the time of the privatisation from which a reasonable pension fund could have been derived. He noted that the former entity had always paid pensions from the funds it held and not through the finance ministry.
“If people were not wantonly greedy that money could have gone to our pension fund. There were talks for GT&T to take over our services entirely and they said that to take over 10 years service it would cost about GUY$400-500M and to take over services 15 years and over would cost about GUY$600M plus,” he said.

Blackett noted that according to the Pension Act, once an individual would have given 33 years service they would not receive less than two-thirds of their pensionable emoluments which would calculated on the average of their annual salary. “Hence we are in a dilemma and the cost of living today is so high and the value of money is so low that commensurate with our status and standards of living we are demanding that this matter be properly addressed and that we be able to get from the authorities concerned our true pensionable benefits,” he declared.

Meanwhile, GPTWU President Harold Shepherd noted that most of the ex-employees have not received their gratuities. Pointing to the 2004 MOU he said the document called for them to sign off on an agreement that would have seen most of the employees receiving the minimum pension and gratuity from 2004. Shepherd added that over the last few years the union has met President Bharrat Jagdeo and has even written to him several times this year without receiving any response. He said the letters stated that the union was in partial agreement with the MOU and was open to discussion on the outstanding areas of concern.

When questioned about the options available to the union should the government fail to deal the GPTWU president said they hope that good sense would prevail. “We’re hoping that we would not have to take that road. I believe that these former employees as senior citizens of this country would have given their best to bring this economy to the state that it is presently at; that good sense would prevail and that the government would not force them to take further industrial action,” Shepherd said.

Cabinet Secretary, Dr. Roger Luncheon has been reported as saying that the Office of the President and the Privatisation Unit are working on models that would see the retirees taking home more than the minimum pension. “Definitely, something that is better than what they actually would have earned if the pension and the superannuation benefits they do receive today reflect solely what their remunerations were in 1990-91,” he said earlier this year. He explained that the pensioners would be made from the coffers of the Privatisation Unit/National Industrial Commercial Investments Limited and not from the GUY$500-700 million reserve fund out of which GTC had paid its pensioners. However, no timeline has been set on the resolution of the matter.

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