Sascha Wil­son

The Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and NGOs (Fi­tun) is pleased that sev­er­al of the union's bud­get pro­pos­als are in­clud­ed in the 2010/2011 bud­get. how­ev­er, Fi­tun has three ar­eas of con­cern. The is­sues cen­tre around the bud­get­ed oil price of US$65 per bar­rel; the amend­ments to the Pe­tro­le­um Tax Regime and ex­pan­sion of Free Trade Zones. In news re­lease, Fi­tun's gen­er­al sec­re­tary Akins Vi­dale said it would have been more pru­dent for Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an to have used a US$55 per bar­rel price as it would have gen­er­at­ed some sav­ings in the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund.

Com­ment­ing on the Petrotrin tax regime, he said they had alert­ed the min­is­ter that there need­ed to be greater con­sul­ta­tion be­fore any de­ci­sion was tak­en.

He said, "Fi­tun was not con­vinced that tax breaks nec­es­sar­i­ly re­sult in in­creased oil pro­duc­tion and/or find­ing new gas re­serves." Ad­dress­ing the is­sue of Free Trade Zones, he said, "Com­pa­nies in Free Trade Zones are no­to­ri­ous for con­tribut­ing lit­tle or noth­ing to the lo­cal econ­o­my, as the on­ly pay­ments which they have to make are for lo­cal wages and salaries and the his­to­ry world­wide has been that work­ers in the Free Trade Zones are high­ly ex­ploit­ed." Vi­dale said if the Gov­ern­ment pur­sued that pol­i­cy they would have to en­sure that work­ers have the un­fet­tered right to join and be rep­re­sent­ed by trade unions. The union al­so said that Dook­er­an failed to ad­dress the min­i­mum wage in the bud­get.

"Fi­tun con­sid­ers that such a key is­sue must be clear­ly ad­dressed to en­sure that all cit­i­zens are able to en­joy a de­cent stan­dard of liv­ing." Vi­dale said his or­gan­i­sa­tion ex­pect­ed a de­fin­i­tive state­ment on that is­sue be­fore the bud­get de­bate was con­clud­ed in the House. The most sig­nif­i­cant of Fi­tun's pro­pos­als which was in­clud­ed in the bud­get, he said, was to de­vel­op east Port of Spain in­to a Her­itage city. Fi­tun, he said, was of the view that the project would have sev­er­al pos­i­tive reper­cus­sions, key of which in­clud­ed em­ploy­ment gen­er­a­tion (which would lead to re­duced crime lev­els), in­creased po­ten­tial in the tourism sec­tor, re­sult­ing in in­creased rev­enue and in­creased for­eign ex­change flows.