On Friday evening of March 9, 2012 a number of Fire Officers employed with TCIG were issued letters terminating their services with TCIG and outlining terms and conditions under which
they were to be employed with Turks and Caicos Airports Authority (TCIAA).
However, these letters did not make provision for Fire Officers being terminated to be paid severance as required by Law.
The Fire Officers were unhappy with this offer as it denied them of their severance pay and hence they took the actions that they considered necessary to get the attention of the
Administration to deal with them fairly and to also address the many issues plaguing the Fire Services that have been neglected since 2008.
The CSA assisted the Fire Officers in negotiating with the Interim Administration in the interest of resolving these issues and returning the aerodrome to normalcy. The Administration refused to concede to the requests made by the CSA on behalf of the Fire Officers and refused to have a meeting with the Fire Officers to resolve the issues.
However, the Administration sent out an email withdrawing the letters of termination of services issued to the Fire Officers on March 9, 2012 in an attempt to bring closure to the actions
being taken by the Fire Officers.
The Fire Officers are of the position that there were too many promises in the past that were not kept and that despite the letters of termination being withdrawn,
they will not let up until the Administration meet with them to discuss their many issues which existed since hurricane Ike in 2008.
They are viewing the withdrawal of the termination letters as a delay tactic in the interest of getting the services back up and running without care to really address the concerns of the
Fire Officers.
The Fire Officers have been requesting an urgent meeting with the Administration since March 10, the beginning of the action. With respect to the press release issued by the Administration, we wish to make it clear that letters of termination were issued late in the evening on March 9, 2012 and not 1 week ago
as indicated by the the press release of yesterday. We also wish to challenge the severance amount that was quoted at over 3 million dollars.
The TCIG press release of last week stated that TCIG paid out 2.7 million dollars in voluntary severance to 225 civil servants who were accepted to date.
So it is inconceivable that the payment of regular severance to 84 very poorly paid Fire Officers can can cost over 3 million dollars.
These statements made by the Interim Administration are reckless and deliberately misleading. CSA President
