Econ­o­mists and busi­ness lead­ers are call­ing for long-term re­forms to T&T’s wage ne­go­ti­a­tion sys­tem af­ter the gov­ern­ment con­firmed that out­stand­ing set­tle­ments for thou­sands of pub­lic sec­tor work­ers will be ad­dressed in fis­cal 2027.

The is­sue emerged dur­ing a CNC3 pan­el dis­cus­sion fol­low­ing Mon­day’s Mid-Year Re­view, in which Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo told nurs­es, teach­ers and oth­er pub­lic sec­tor work­ers await­ing set­tle­ments that “re­lief is com­ing” and that the rel­e­vant ap­pro­pri­a­tions would be made in the next fi­nan­cial year.

More than 60,000 unionised work­ers have been await­ing the res­o­lu­tion of salary ne­go­ti­a­tions, some stretch­ing back years.