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Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) 2nd Vice Pres­i­dent Reesa Ram­lo­gan-Jod­ha said T&TEC work­ers are fi­nal­ly re­ceiv­ing much-need­ed fi­nan­cial re­lief.

"This has been long out­stand­ing," she added, re­spond­ing to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, who an­nounced on No­vem­ber 21 in Par­lia­ment an agree­ment with the OW­TU to pro­vide new CO­LA pay­ments for week­ly and month­ly paid T&TEC work­ers. This is in ad­di­tion to $131.2 mil­lion in retroac­tive pay­ments, al­so sched­uled be­tween this month and Feb­ru­ary 2026.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Ram­lo­gan-Jod­ha not­ed that the CO­LA is­sue orig­i­nat­ed from ne­go­ti­a­tions for the 2015 to 2017 col­lec­tive pe­ri­od. How­ev­er, de­spite a court rul­ing on this mat­ter, she said man­age­ment had re­fused to ap­ply the CO­LA pay­ments.