TSTT separates vice president – Trinidad Guardian

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Rat­tan Boodram has been sep­a­rat­ed from his po­si­tion as vice pres­i­dent of tech­nol­o­gy from TSTT, trig­ger­ing a reshuf­fle at the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el as the state-con­trolled telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider con­tin­ues its trans­for­ma­tion dri­ve.

Boodram was sep­a­rat­ed ear­li­er this week and re­placed by Reza Ho­sein, who pre­vi­ous­ly held re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence, mul­ti­ple sources con­firmed.

The sources in­di­cat­ed that the de­ci­sion fol­lowed per­sis­tent com­plaints raised by work­ers through the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU) and dis­sat­is­fac­tion with his per­for­mance by the act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer.

Boodram is well known in the lo­cal telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor. He pre­vi­ous­ly worked at TSTT be­fore join­ing Dig­i­cel and lat­er re­turned to TSTT.

Dur­ing his ca­reer, he al­so worked along­side for­mer TSTT chief ex­ec­u­tive Kent West­ern at both or­gan­i­sa­tions.

West­ern was lat­er sep­a­rat­ed from TSTT. CWU Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer wel­comed the de­par­ture, ar­gu­ing that se­nior ex­ec­u­tives must be ca­pa­ble of en­gag­ing em­ploy­ees and sup­port­ing the com­pa­ny’s strate­gic di­rec­tion.

“You can­not have a vice pres­i­dent who can­not speak to staff, re­bukes mem­bers of staff and is in iso­la­tion.”
Ogeer main­tained that the union sup­ports ef­forts to mod­ernise the com­pa­ny and po­si­tion it for sus­tain­able prof­itabil­i­ty.

“The com­pa­ny is mov­ing to a tech­nol­o­gy era, and the union is sup­port­ive of hav­ing TSTT poised for prof­itabil­i­ty, which will im­prove the lives of all em­ploy­ees who con­tribute on a dai­ly ba­sis to mak­ing TSTT prof­itable.”
She al­so linked the com­pa­ny’s re­port­ed fi­nan­cial per­for­mance to on­go­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“Min­is­ter Padarath has in­ti­mat­ed that the com­pa­ny has record­ed a hefty and rea­son­able prof­it. This should re­dound to set­tling ne­go­ti­a­tions ex­pe­di­tious­ly as ex­pect­ed to re­sume on Ju­ly 1, 2026.”

The union leader warned that work­ers would not ac­cept wage pro­pos­als in­volv­ing salary freezes or the non-con­sol­i­da­tion of cost-of-liv­ing al­lowances.

“Ze­ro is not an of­fer,” said Ogeer.

He ar­gued that em­ploy­ees have faced in­creas­ing work­loads fol­low­ing re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cis­es con­duct­ed in 2018 and 2022.

“All work­ers with­in the bar­gain­ing unit de­serve their salaries to match the ra­tio of work they do since the sham re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cis­es of 2018 and 2022—which stripped the or­gan­i­sa­tion of in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge and has ex­ac­er­bat­ed the stress lev­els—de­mands have in­creased to make tar­gets with a skele­tal staff.”

She added that the union is close­ly mon­i­tor­ing what it views as po­lit­i­cal ap­point­ments with­in the com­pa­ny and in­tends to ad­dress those mat­ters pub­licly at an ap­pro­pri­ate time.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, TSTT con­firmed that Ho­sein has been ap­point­ed vice pres­i­dent, tech­nol­o­gy, and that On­i­ca Black­man has been ap­point­ed act­ing vice pres­i­dent, cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence. The com­pa­ny thanked Boodram for his ser­vice and con­tri­bu­tions dur­ing his tenure and wished him suc­cess in his fu­ture en­deav­ours.

TSTT de­scribed Ho­sein and Black­man as ex­pe­ri­enced lead­ers with long-stand­ing ser­vice to the or­gan­i­sa­tion and a deep un­der­stand­ing of the busi­ness, its cus­tomers, and strate­gic pri­or­i­ties.

The com­pa­ny stat­ed that the ap­point­ments will pro­vide con­ti­nu­ity in two crit­i­cal ar­eas as it ex­e­cutes its trans­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy, strength­ens cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence, and ad­vances its evo­lu­tion from a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny in­to a tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven ser­vices provider.

TSTT added that it re­mains fo­cused on de­liv­er­ing val­ue to cus­tomers, em­ploy­ees, and stake­hold­ers while build­ing a stronger, more ag­ile, and fu­ture-ready or­gan­i­sa­tion.