The Association of Beneficiaries and Retired Public Officers held a press conference yesterday to explain why they must urgently protest against the Public Service Workers Trust to get the 8 million dollars that the trust holds.
600 of the Trustees, retired public officers have filed a lawsuit against the PWST, but due to previous rulings from the court, this has created a challenge for GOB to dissolve the trust. The president of ABPRO says they are displeased with the lack of urgency from the trust protector, who is the Financial secretary, Joseph Waight. And if he doesn't act they will have no other choice but to picket the PM's office until they are heard.
Hubert Enriquez, President, ABRPO
"Basically what happened in 1995 is that the government had difficulties in meeting the financial obligations so they turned to the public officers at the unions to help them to bail them out so to speak and so what they did really was to defer the increments of public officers, they get on an annual basis and that was how they were able to balance their budget so to speak, but for that they made a commitment as well to invest the funds that could have been saved and they did by issuing to the unions shares in BTL those shares are valued at a certain amount of money and in fact it is true that at that time 490,000 shares to public officers and over the years, what it was worth at the time 2.4 million dollars worth that was invested and over the years it has now grown to 10 million dollars and those are the exact funds that are now with that funds they are now able to pay the amount that they actually withheld from public officers."
"One of the things that came out of the court case that was held some years ago was that the government would be named as a settler of the trust with the settler now being the government they now have the authority to be able to name a protector of the trust because the protector at first was with the unions and so now it has moved back to where it ought to be which is the government and they have named now a protector and the protector has not acted the way It should act we are here today because we want him to act, and the government to make him act and he can act he has authority according to the law."
"We are prepared to take whatever action is necessary for us to get this matter settled and we are not happy at all, even though we've been able to get the protector named no action has taken place and so we are pleading with the government to or the protector and the government really to act so that this can finally be resolved. They say they are going to do it. We don't know why they don't want to do it but they should do it."
"Whatever support we can get would be helpful. It would certainly be helpful, the public as well you know, to assist because we are going to initiate action definitely and whatever support we get we are certainly appreciative of it."