The 7th Procurement Failure on Seabridge:
Cabinet Hijack of Public Procurement
On November 30, 2017, PM Rowley appointed a 4-member Cabinet sub-committee to “find a vessel immediately”.
Claiming that the tender process “managed by the Port Authority with the Works Ministry has failed” …”to provide a ferry” …for “the sixth time”, then Minister in the PM’s Office announced the PM’s decision to have Cabinet hijack the Procurement Function of the PATT and the Ministry of Transport.
Why did the tender fail? Young said, “there may have been people seeking to influence the outcome”.
So, the PM, by decree, and contrary to all tenets of proper public procurement practice, not to mention, contrary to the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act, directed the Cabinet usurpation of Public Procurement to buy Galleons Passage.
Claiming expediency, Young said “the subcommittee was “working apace” to hopefully report back within a couple of weeks and had contacted ten international shipping brokers plus TT-based diplomats from Canada, Australia and Japan and Italy for help.”. Cabinet created its own tendering process – contacting brokers and begging diplomats for help.
CABINET-HIJACKED PROCUREMENT ENDS IN CONTRACT FAILURES
No wonder this completely inappropriate and unaccountable process has resulted in the purchase of a brand-new boat, which does not fully meet the Requirements of the Ferry Service and requires ‘retrofitting’ including installation of toilets.
Yesterday, in Parliament, the Ag. PM, answering a question from the Opposition about the failure of the Galleons Passage completion, reported that the seller failed to complete its contractual 'retrofitting' obligation in Cuba because they were unable to import material into Cuba.
The Ag. PM cited a claim by the ‘seller’ about not knowing about unjust US Embargo against Cuba.
Mr. Imbert then announced that the boat is now come immediately to TT, to be 'retrofitted' while in service. In other words, the Cabinet-hijacked procurement process has produced a boat that is not ‘fit-for-purpose’, that has not met the delivery deadline and that will require some disruption of service to facilitate changes not delivered by the ‘seller’.
What the Ag. PM did not clarify was how this ‘in-service’ retrofitting would affect ferry service schedules and passenger convenience and what penalty the ‘seller’ would face.
NIDCO also issued a statement claiming, “These modifications were being undertaken to make the vessel more suitable for its purpose.”. Amazing! A commodity purchased by contract is either fit-for-purpose or not. It cannot be ‘more or less suitable for purpose.  
All of this means that the contractual obligations of the seller and some by the ‘buyer’ have NOT been met, but, delivery is being accepted by the same Cabinet which ordered cancellation of a recent contract for ‘late arrival’ of the Ocean Flower II.
MORE PM/CABINET PROCUREMENT EPISODES
In recent weeks, PM Rowley and another Cabinet team went to Australia to visit 2 shipping companies to procure more ferries and even a coast guard boat.
This is another episode of the continuing hijacking of the procurement process by Cabinet.
Speaking at the same PNM meeting in Barataria, PM Rowley used his party meeting to try and justify the secret deal-making involved in the touted Sandals-managed (600 to 800 room) resort in Tobago.
The details of an MOU between Government and Sandals have been just refused by the PS to the PM in response to Freedom of Information (FOI) request on the basis that the agreement contains ‘non-disclosure’ clauses. Another secret deal worth Billions of Public Dollars.
At the party meeting, PM Rowley said he not answering any "DOTISH QUESTIONS" ABOUT WHAT PROCUREMENT PROCESS WAS USED TO MAKE HIS DEAL WITH BUTCH STEWART THOUGH HE INITIATED IT WHILE HE WAS OPPOSITION LEADER.
So, this goes another step further into the realm of Procurement by Executive Decree and Fiat.
For a Prime Minister, and particularly this one (who boasted about his anti-corruption questioning in the Manning Cabinet re UDECOTT projects) openly and boastfully announce that he will not account for procurement of a billion-dollar project, starting while he was NOT even in Government.
What has amazed me most about this is that a week has passed since the PM’s statement and there is no serious denunciation of this blatantly anti-democratic position stated by the Head of a Cabinet which continues to make Billion Dollar Deals while leaving the Public Procurement legislation inoperable and ineffective.
This current direction of Cabinet-hijacked processes and Prime Ministerial Decree is a road to authoritarian PM Rule and Governance completely devoid of Accountability and Transparency. This is the Road of Unending Corruption.
POLITICIANS HAVE NO BUSINESS IN PROCUREMENT! SECRET DEALING-MAKING BY POLITICIANS IS THE STUFF CORRUPTION IS MADE OF!
PEOPLE, STAND UP AND DEMAND REAL ACCOUNTABILITY FROM THE GOVERNMENT!
Clyde Weatherhead
A Citizen Fighting for
Democratic Renewal of our Society
21 June 2018

On the 81st Anniversary of the Butler Riots:
MEMBERS NEED TO RESTORE TRADE UNION MISSION
June 19, 2018 marks the 81st anniversary of the anti-colonial uprising, popularly called the Butler Riots.
In those powerful days of workers’ struggle in 1937 waged from Point Fortin to Caroni, to Sangre Grande and Tobago, the fighting workers inscribed on their banner ‘LET THOSE WHO LABOUR HOLD THE REINS’. The reins they demanded to control were not merely to have some improvement in their wages and conditions of work, but to have control of the reins of political and economic power.
The workers’ demands of 1937 included:

• legalizing their defence organisations – the trade unions – to continue waging the ongoing struggles in defence of their interests in the workplace.
• increased wages in all sectors of the economy, old age pensions and general improvements in the conditions in which they worked and lived
• for self-determination for the entire nation – Home Rule (Independence from the colonial imposition)
• for the right to vote, no longer based on property ownership or ability to speak English which were used to deny the majority of citizens even the most basic level of participation in the political process.

This was no mere economic struggle. It was a challenge to the status quo going to the very root of the existing economic and social order and announcing the awakening of the working class in this country to its historic mission – to create a new social order with the majority in control.
To reduce the significance of 1937 is to misunderstand its fundamental value as the cause for which 14 martyrs, 60 plus wounded and hundreds of arrested workers sacrificed their lives, their bodies and freedom.
THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN TRADE UNION MOVEMENT
 While the awakening of the workers to conscious understanding of the Necessity of their Historic Mission to Hold the Reins of Power was at the heart of the significance of 1937, it also marked the birth pains of the modern trade union movement in Trinidad and Tobago.
There is a distorted version of history that suggests this as a result of the ‘goodness’ of the colonial masters through their Moyne Commission and the ‘sympathy’ of the Empire’s British Parliament.
From the recognition of the legal status of trade unions, the registration of unions began in earnest in 1937 starting with the Oilfields Workers Trade Union, All Trinidad Sugar Estates and Factory Workers’ Trade Union, Amalgamated Building Workers Union, Seamen and Waterfront Workers’ Trade Union, Public Workers Trade Union and Federated Workers Union.
In 1938, several more unions like the Railway Workers’ Trade Union, All Trinidad Transport and General Workers’ Trade Union, Civil Service Association, TT Union of Shop Assistants and Clerks, Printers’ Industrial Trade Union and the Tobago Industrial Union were registered. By 1939, there were 13 registered trade unions.
The unions recognised the Necessity for unity and solidarity, not only of the workers in each union, but among all the individual unions. They consolidated themselves into a national organisation of trade unions. The first such umbrella trade union organisation was established in 1938; the Committee of Industrial Organisation (CIO), led by Rienzi. It changed its name to the Trinidad and Tobago Trades Union Council (TTUC) in 1939.
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT FRACTURED
Having survived the testing years of the World War, in the context of the split in the world trade union movement into 2 major camps and because of internal squabbles, the trade union umbrella suffered its first fracture.
Seven unions left the TTUC and formed the Trinidad and Tobago Federation of Trade Unions (TTFTU) in 1950. This was the beginning of a series of such factional divisions in the national trade union.
By 1958, the unions re-united under a single trade umbrella, the National Trade Union Centre (NTUC).  
Ever since, the splits and reunifications have recurred.
The disruptions in the unity and solidarity of the movement have been the result of ideological differences and views on the mission of the workers’ and trade union movements; opposing stands on the introduction of legislation like the ISA; support for various political parties and even squabbles over ‘borderline’ issues and poaching.
The overall effect of the lack of unity among the unions has been the inability to advance the interests of the workers in their trade union aims and, in the mission, inscribed on the banner of 1937 – LET THOSE WHO LABOUR HOLD THE REINS!
THE STATE OF THE MOVEMENT IN 2018
The on-again-off-again unity of the trade union movement has led to the situation in recent years of the existence of not 2, but, 3 trade union ‘centres’ – NATUC, FITUN and JTUM.
These ‘centres’ routinely engage in exercises to decide which political party of the status quo to pin their hopes on. Some have reached the point of ‘negotiating’ agreements with political parties while in Opposition, knowing full well that such ‘memoranda’ cannot be enforced.
Several individual unions are also in a state of disorganization, some founded in the crucible years 1937-38. Education programmes and effective representation at various levels of the disputes process have been weakened or non-existent. There are even several unions which exclusively take up grievances and disputes on behalf of individual workers.
The strength of the trade union movement is based on the Unity and Solidarity of the workers and their organisations in fighting for their common interests and aims.
However, that is not possible in an atmosphere of division and disunity. That is the clear lesson of the entire history of the trade union movement since 1937.
MEMBERS MUST RESTORE THEIR UNIONS’ MISSION
With the approach of the 81st anniversary of the Butler Riots, some trade union leaders have, not for the first time, announced their intention to turn the commemoration of this powerful anti-colonial uprising into a mere ‘appraisal’ of the incumbent Party-in-Power and its leader, the PM.
The mission inscribed in 1937 was not ‘LET THOSE WHO LABOUR APPRAISE THE PERFORMANCE OF THOSE WHO DEPRIVE THEM OF THE REINS OF POWER’.
This now-ritual ‘criticism’ of the representatives of those who Own and Control Wealth and Power in the society is far removed from what was fought for by the workers of 1937.
The phenomenon of a union being ordered to reinstate the majority of its own workers, unfairly dismissed, must have those who sacrificed so much in 1937 turning in their graves at the sound of unions behaving more like the oil and sugar bosses of that period.
The members of the individual unions and of the trade union movement as a whole must organise themselves to ‘hold the reins’ of their organisations and put them back on the road that Butler and all the fighters of 1937 pointed to and acted on.
A mere formal ‘re-unification’ like the formation of NATUC in 1991 will not do.
Without re-establishing their own control within their organisations and building their Unity and Solidarity by fighting in support of each other and for the aims of 1937, the workers will forever be deprived of their most valuable defence organisations and the working class will never realise its mission to HOLD THE REINS OF POWER!
 
Clyde Weatherhead
A Worker Who Refuses to
Abandon the Mission of 1937.

#1 7th St. West
Delamarre Ave
Trincity
June 11, 2018
OPEN LETTER TO THE CHAIRMAN OF TSTT/BMOBILE/BLINK/AMPLIA
BLACKMAIL OF CONSUMERS
Dear Mr. Mayers,
After my 2-month plus ordeal with Blink Entertainment, particularly and your company (companies’) services, I am finally putting pen to paper to bring to the attention of the public and your good self the course of what I can only describe as an attempt to blackmail me, as a consumer by your company/companies.
Let me first indicate that I have known no other telephone service than the TSTT landline and Blink cellular service, though for different lengths of time.
My landline number has remained unchanged since the 1980’s.
Over the years, I have resisted the marketing campaigns appealing to urges of conspicuous consumption and refused to enter into a cable tv contract with any provider. My parents, 30 years my senior did so several decades ago.
However, I abandoned my ideological resistance to the not-so-healthy cultural influences of cable programming and decided to have more than the 3 local channels that my free-to-air antenna allowed me access.
A little over 2 years ago, I took the plunge and a combination of economics and the fact that your Blink Entertainment was the only service allowing me access to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and some educational and uplifting cultural entertainment steered me in your company/companies’ direction.
Out of curiosity, are TSTT, BMOBILE and Blink one or more company/companies?
MY LAST 2 MONTHS
My initial experience with your wireless TV service was not perfect, but, bearable.
I was educated by your contracted call centre operatives that electromagnetic transmissions do get washed away during slight, moderate or heavy rainfall. So, the occasional short losses of service were the fault of mother nature and not any inadequacy of your equipment. So, I was made to understand.
Since May last year, the pixelized images or blank screens ceased to be mostly very temporary features of Blink Entertainment’s service.
The loss of service – NO TV – began to last 24 hours or more. On one occasion, it lasted all of 2½ days. I was assured by your call centre representatives on the second day that if my black screen continued for 3 days, I would become entitled to a rebate of the fees I paid diligently.
Lo and behold just about 10 hours before the expiration of the 72-hour threshold, there appeared picture on my screen.
On several occasions that May and June and in later months the periods of blackout would last 24 hours or thereabouts. I was treated to numerous technician’s visits; all with the same refrain – There is nothing wrong with the equipment in my house.
But, I persisted and refused my neighbours’ and friends’ encouragement to switch to any of the other providers including the ‘independent’ one in my area.
Then as of March 2018, the black screens have become permanent.
For the first 2 weeks, I was advised by my almost daily calls to 824-TSTT that there ‘was a problem with the tower on the Lady Young’ and ‘the technicians are working on it but, haven’t indicated when the problem will be resolved’.
When I heard calls to the I 95.5 consumer complaint programme, I, too called to indicate my plight of no service from Blink Entertainment for then 3 weeks.
By week 4, the call centre representatives became more creative. The technicians still had not given any timeframe for resolving the problems with the Lady Young tower which they assured me was not pushed down the slopes by the landslide in that area.
Now, they suggested to me that I could switch to an alternative service available in my area called AMPLIA.
I was perplexed at first that TSTT representatives were directing me to a service from another company. Then I learnt that AMPLIA was really the Massy broadband services bought out by TSTT/BMOBILE/BLINK.
I was called almost daily with offers reaching as low as 2-months half rate fees for this service.
I began to be concerned that after a whole month without service, I was being encouraged to take an “alternative” service. I decided not to.
But, my neighbour, who did not have Blink Entertainment, told me that he was also told by TSTT/AMPLIA representatives that he should take the AMPLIA package instead of his TSTT landline and internet and tv services from another provider.
Why? He was told that TSTT was ‘phasing out’ its copper wire infrastructure.
So, he accepted the sales pitch and seeming inevitability of commodity obsolescence.
At the end of week 8, the call centre confirmed on my questioning that my Blink Entertainment service was terminated. No notice to me. No phone call or email. Your company/companies terminated my service while still collecting my payments which cover both landline and wireless TV services.
Only when I in less subdued tones pushed the issue further, the lady said they would ‘recommend a rebate’ for the lack of service for the last 2 months.
Then she proceeded to ‘suggest’ that I could ‘upgrade’ by taking a new ‘alternative’ wireless service package from TSTT/Blink - phone/internet (which I have had since December)/TV, all wireless and the TV would cost me a bit more than my now terminated Blink Entertainment service. More than that, I would have to pay $200 installation fee for this ‘alternative’ service.
I told her – This is Blackmail.
I then requested to speak with someone senior. A very pleasant-sounding Supervisor (I was told) came on the line about 4 minutes later and what she told me was all that the first representative and even more outrageous statements.
For the first time in 2 months, she told me that the problem with the Lady Young tower was that it was vandalized.
I was flabbergasted at that. Worse, it was confirmed to me that no notice to that effect was issued and I did not miss any call providing such information to affected customers like me. There were no such calls.
I told her that I did not request any new service and would NOT pay any installation fee for an upgraded service that your company/companies was imposing on me.
The Supervisor then suggested that they (call centre) would recommend that the installation fee be waived, just like my 2 months payments for no service would be rebated.
Well, I asked, if I decided to submit to this blackmail, when could I expect to have this ‘new’ service? As it is, I can’t watch news at home and a major world sporting event was starting in 12 days.
The answer was astounding, to put it mildly.
She could not assure me that I could have this new service within 12 days or suggest when it might be possible. Why?
Your company/companies have run out of such equipment. More is ordered with no date of arrival given.
So, I am being blackmailed into taking an “upgraded” wireless package (of which I already have the wireless internet since December 1 last year) and I can’t be told when I might possibly get it.
At that point I asked the Supervisor for an address to which I could write to you, Mr. Chairman, about this treatment meted out to me.
Her reply – We are not allowed to give out that information.
Me – What! You are TSTT and you can’t give customers an address to communicate with the TSTT Chairman.
Her reply – We are a contracted call centre and we are not permitted to give out that kind of information.
MR. CHAIRMAN LISTEN
That was the last straw.
Since the 2 ½  day no service in May last year, I said I would write to the Telecommunications Authority (TATT) about the shabby Blink Entertainment service.
And, since I cannot be given an address to write to you, Mr. Mayers, as Chairman of TSTT or TSTT/BMOBILE/BLINK/AMPLIA or whatever by Customer Service Representatives of your company/companies, I have to resort to communicating to you by OPEN LETTER.
I trust that this, if published by the newspapers to which I am sending it immediately, will also come to the attention of the Chairman, TATT.
I hope that the Consumer Affairs Division wherever it may be located, if it still exists will take note.
Sir, your company/companies failing to provide me with service for 2 months is bad enough.
But, to then terminate a service which you are not providing for 2 months is worse enough.
And, to try to coerce customers/consumers to pay installation fees for an upgraded service which is not requested by the customer, but, being imposed by your company/companies is BLACKMAIL.
THIS IS WORSE THAN JUST BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE.
THIS IS EXTORTION.
Your long and loyal customer,
 
 Sgnd/ Clyde A. Weatherhead.
A customer who refuses
to be bullied and blackmailed
by your conglomerate.
cc:        Telecommunications Authority of
            Trinidad and Tobago
            Consumer Affairs Division
            Public Utilities Commission