PIRG Trinidad (Public Interest Research Group) is fashioned after US Consumer’s group www.uspirg.org and is a NON PROFIT NGO founded in APRIL 2001 by entrepreneur Trevor Hosten a victim of local banking abuses, misfeasance and malfeasance, and their malevolence and immaturity for fighting back following PIRG’S public exposure of their questionable banking practices. The desire to address banking issues was further exacerbated by an increasing plethora of public complaints from consumers becoming concerned with local banking predatory practices, randomly increasing bank fees resulting in excessive and unconscionable “PROFITS” in the face of diminishing service driven solely by their unilateral bottom line, arrogance and insolence towards its very customers, inside dealings relating to sale of properties, Publicly Naming & Shaming of its delinquent customers no longer favorable to their bottom line, illegal repossessions, and sudden disappearance of funds in various and more so dormant accounts by bank employees with access to these accounts.

Sadly, at the height of the nefarious kidnappings, the despicable kidnappers could tell the victim’s family how much money the victim being held had in specific bank accounts when these families understandably complained about not having “that kind of money” the kidnappers were demanding, leaving citizens to point blame squarely at the feet of bank employees.

When consumers complained against new and rising banking fees, then RBTT Bank Managing Director, and Chairman of BATT Peter July arrogantly admonished these protest as quoted in the Trinidad Express stating ”Banks are going to raise their fees and charges and for those who complain the bank is more likely to hold their hands and walk them across the Street into the arms of the competition and less likely to reduce these fees”.

SCOTIA’S  then MD, Ronnie Chan when interviewed is quoted as saying “Pirg sounds like somebody has an axe to grind”, with the entire aloof and arrogant BATT membership completely impervious to the complaints of its very customers, forever seeing themselves as “fit and proper”, and infallible if not completely devoid of a scintilla of fault in every aspect of local banking with their parochial vision of doing nothing to build the small man of society, choosing to risk nothing,  except to offer them loans backed only by collateral like Cars and Mortgages, and credit cards up to $5000.00 for “consumerism” since it commands interest averaging 28% while retail merchants are charged 5% for accepting the cards.  If these “clients” become delinquent their names are advertised in the Newspapers under the bank’s notorious ‘REQUEST TO CONTACT” ads.  This level of PUBLIC NAMING & SHAMING customers viewed as no longer favorable to their financial bottom line is NOT practiced by SCOTIA & RBC banks in Canada, nor would it ever be tolerate there.

Without advance warning as is the practice of local banks, Republic Bank suddenly introduced a “NO HAT/CAP, NO SUNSHADES, NO CELL PHONE” policy and when one of its Rastafarian customers bitterly complained about the bank’s infringement, the bank refused to serve him and immediately,  and on the spot, closed his account. JUST LIKE THAT!  Again, without any public notice SCOTIA Bank engaged stealth and introduced in June 2014 a predatory $5.00 nuisance fee by charging if not discriminating against its non-customers to cash its (Scotia) customer’s cheques and honor their fiduciary duty to its account holders. Following a June 29 2014 article by Express columnist Raoul Pantin referring to them as “PICKPOCKETS”, the bank appears to have abandoned this in the same stealth with which it was introduced.

 

What catapulted a way forward for PIRG via a sudden and powerful onslaught on banking practices by a series of unprecedented Newspaper advertisements and press releases educating consumers on their rights while PUTTING BANKERS ON NOTICE was the decision in March of 2001 by the powerful Bankers Association of Trinidad & Tobago (BATT) to institute a “security fee” charge against its customers for what the banks termed “increasing cheque fraud” which, in the opinion of PIRG, over 99.99% of banking consumers were honest and not responsible for.  PIRG further expressed the fact that much of these “bank Fraud” were done by a very minute group of unscrupulous individuals aided and abetted no doubt by equally dishonest bank employees earning a percentage of these ill-gotten gains which BATT unscrupulously wanted to levy against its customers rather than adequately address the problem via our legal framework.

 

Following the launch of PIRG and its public advertisements dissuading consumers to refuse paying this “security fee”, nothing was again  heard of this devious plan by deep pocketed and predatory local banks to further dip their hands in the pockets of the masses, the very consumers they depended on for their massive if not questionable “Profits”. In its Oct. 07, 2002 issue, the influential TIME magazine did a story on local banking machinations shamefully referring to Trinidad Banks as “PREDATORS IN PARADISE” accusing them of charging their customers excessive fees.

Although PIRG Trinidad was specifically formed to address banking issues, it cannot help but seek to correct many social imbalances affecting society’s  poor and dispossessed, including but not limited to Police brutality and increasing executions, non-payments and run around by Insurance Companies demanding all your premiums upfront, a much needed LEMON LAW, Public Naming & Shaming practices, unfair, puerile and uneducated Retail practices, Consumer’s Right of RECISION, A Fair Credit Reporting Act and The Right of Consumers to be educated on CREDIT  and access to their credit files,  that certain necessary services like Law and Medicine be treated as the commercial business they truly are, and the right of these practitioners to advertise their business highlighting their area/s of expertise,  and A BAIL BONDS ACT to make it easier and professional for arrested persons to have prompt access to BAIL when granted by the Courts.