Oilfields Workers' Trade Union president general Ancel Roget has warned multinationals against seeking to take control of local state enterprises through privatisation and pledged that T&T's most powerful trade union will fight to maintain local control of key state companies.
Roget renewed his pledge to fight against privatisation during yesterday's launch of the OWTU's 80th anniversary celebrations at the union's San Fernando headquarters.
Roget said today was no different from 1979 when former OWTU leader George Weekes led the Texaco Must Go campaign except they were now fighting local masters as opposed to colonial masters.
Reminding his comrades comprising 17 local trade unions of the 1979 struggles "to take control of the commanding heights of the economy," Roget said: "So consistent was that mission that we would have traversed that course mashing a lot of toes, mashing a lot of political corns and therefore it is absolutely no different today. Today they are here again, in fact they never left, so we would have exchanged our colonial masters for local masters. So you have those vultures, those corbeaux flying over state enterprise."
Roget said there are some analysts and commentators who think the best prescription for modern T&T is privatisation. But he said the OWTU fought to ensure that locals replaced the foreigners who controlled the commanding heights of the economy, but the locals "made a mess of it."
Saying that those in power have now given up and believe the only solution is privatisation, he cautioned that the sale of state assets will not redound to the benefit of citizens and the country.
Warning the ordinary man not to be fooled by the term public private partnership, Roget declared: "If is one pledge, if is one commitment I want to give nationally is the commitment to save our national patrimony and to save it from the vultures and from the hands of privatisation.
"I want to warn all of the drivers of privatisation to take your hands off, remove that intention and like corbeaux and vultures remove yourself from our state enterprise, Petrotrin. We are prepared to fight to defend that."
Recalling recent attacks on independent and democratic institutions he pledged to support any institution that dispenses justice and "not sit idly by and allow those neocolonialist, those new plantation owners to continue to launch their vicious attack and malign us in some kind of conspiracy to cause workers to benefit."
Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies chairman Dr Roosevelt Williams, who delivered the feature address, extended an invitation to the OWTU to work together with the college.