Sacha Wil­son

Pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions (Fi­tun) Joseph Re­my be­lieves the na­tion­al bud­get holds out no hope for the trade union move­ment. Ad­dress­ing a post-bud­get fo­rum at OW­TU's head­quar­ters at San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, Re­my said the bud­get failed to ad­dress the union's con­cerns about the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­dus­try. "Com­rades, this bud­get has not left any hope for us," he said.

Warn­ing of the dan­gers of pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship (PPP), he said Fi­tun would not sup­port the in­te­gra­tion of Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) and Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) work­ers in­to the pri­vate sec­tor. Re­my said Fi­tun was com­mit­ted to the Na­tion­al Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Coun­cil through the process of so­cial di­a­logue, but there were no dis­cus­sions about trans­fer­ring CEPEP or URP to pri­vate sec­tor.

He said the Gov­ern­ment had re­ject­ed Fi­tun's pro­pos­al three years ago to turn URP and CEPEP in­to co-op­er­a­tives and al­low them to be run by re­spec­tive com­mu­ni­ties. Re­my warned that with­out pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion, the Gov­ern­ment would have se­ri­ous cost chal­lenges.

Trinidad Unit­ed Food As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Shi­raz Khan said the Gov­ern­ment was still treat­ing agri­cul­ture as the bas­tard child of the coun­try. He called for a land-use pol­i­cy and land tenure for farm­ers. Khan said the re­moval of VAT on food items would fur­ther fu­el price-goug­ing by busi­ness own­ers and would not help lo­cal farm­ers. Sec­re­tary of the Trinidad Youth Coun­cil Ravi Lutch­man said the bud­get was a re­hash of all that was not ac­com­plished in the last fis­cal year.