On Au­gust 16, An­cel Ro­get, pres­i­dent-gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU), said trade unions, hav­ing threat­ened over sev­er­al months to shut down the coun­try, de­cid­ed to ex­tend the threat from one day to "days."No date for the na­tion­al shut­down was dis­closed.Ro­get said "they were build­ing to some­thing" and warned cit­i­zens to stock up on vi­tal sup­plies.

"Put aside clean and fresh wa­ter, buy can­dles, do all that is nec­es­sary. The day of reck­on­ing is com­ing for T&T," Ro­get said."Work­ers from every­where would re­spond to the call for the need to res­cue T&T," he said. He was speak­ing on the now cus­tom­ary joint trade union lead­ers plat­form out­side the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty's (WASA) head of­fice in St Joseph.

The OW­TU has no union ju­ris­dic­tion with­in WASA, but Ro­get was on hand to speak with WASA work­ers, along with Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) lead­ers James Lam­bert and Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) pres­i­dent, Vin­cent Cabr­era, and oth­er union lead­ers.