T&T minister defends firing of 199 university staff

(Trinidad Guardian) Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia on Fri­day ad­mit­ted that the ter­mi­na­tion of 199 non-aca­d­e­m­ic Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) staff will be a trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence, but said it was the on­ly way the in­sti­tu­tion could sur­vive. He al­so en­cour­aged the af­fect­ed work­ers to go out and find new jobs to get their lives back on track.

Gar­cia was com­ment­ing on the dis­missal of the work­ers, who re­ceived their ter­mi­na­tion let­ters on Friday.

Hav­ing held a meet­ing with UTT’s chair­man and vice-chair­man last week, Gar­cia said they out­lined the process they in­tend­ed to take dur­ing the process so that the work­ers would be aware of the fact that their em­ploy­ment will no longer be need­ed.

Asked by Guardian Me­dia what ad­vice he would ren­der to the work­ers who would be trau­ma­tised by their dis­missals, Gar­cia replied: “For a work­er to be sep­a­rat­ed… it will be trau­mat­ic. I agreed with you. We will be do­ing our best to en­sure that this tran­si­tion is smooth. The work­ers will be giv­en 45 days (no­tice) to come to terms with this sep­a­ra­tion. And dur­ing that pe­ri­od we will en­cour­age them to find oth­er means of em­ploy­ment if that is nec­es­sary. So they will be able to ease very quick­ly and calm­ly in­to this new phase of their life.”

Gar­cia said UTT has been over­staffed and this batch of work­ers who were sent home was not the first. “Since that was done the uni­ver­si­ty con­tin­ued its work with­out any hin­drances.”

In Ju­ly, Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get, in ad­dress­ing UTT work­ers, said the ter­mi­na­tion of 199 of them would be the first wave to be re­trenched.

Ques­tioned about this, Gar­cia said he had no idea what Ro­get was speak­ing about.

“What I know is that we held ex­ten­sive dis­cus­sions with the union,” he said.

In one of those meet­ings, Gar­cia said, he out­lined what the process would be. The ter­mi­na­tion of the work­ers, he said, will save UTT $2 mil­lion month­ly.

Gar­cia could not say how much it would cost the gov­ern­ment to pay the work­ers their sep­a­ra­tion packages.

“I don’t want to haz­ard a guess. The in­for­ma­tion was made avail­able to us but I don’t have it at hand. In­stead of mak­ing a guess I will with­hold that in­for­ma­tion un­til I get the prop­er in­for­ma­tion,” he said.

Gar­cia said the work­ers can be pro­vid­ed coun­selling via the Min­istry of Labour.

“I don’t know the ex­tent of coun­selling that will be need­ed. But the fact is that if UTT has to sur­vive they have to make sure that it is or­gan­ised in such a way that our ex­pens­es are af­ford­able.”