Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley claims Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is be­ing dis­rup­tive by claim­ing there is no five per cent cap on wages in the coun­try.Row­ley ex­pressed this in a tele­phone in­ter­view from Lon­don yes­ter­day in re­sponse to height­ened threats by work­ers to shut down the coun­try."The Gov­ern­ment is mak­ing a mess of in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions in the coun­try for which there will be a so­cial and eco­nom­ic price," Row­ley stressed.

Mem­ber unions of the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions (Fi­tun) and the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of T&T (Natuc) have threat­ened to call a na­tion­al strike to protest gov­ern­ment's fail­ure to re­move the so-called five per cent cap on wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.Per­sad-Bisses­sar ter­mi­nat­ed Tues­day's three-hour meet­ing with labour lead­ers with no agree­ment reached on the is­sue.Row­ley said yes­ter­day the Gov­ern­ment had im­posed a five per cent cap pol­i­cy and it must ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for it.He said that pol­i­cy was re­sist­ed by trade unions.

Row­ley said Per­sad-Bisses­sar's claim of be­ing un­aware of the pol­i­cy was "disin­gen­u­ous, dis­re­spect­ful and de­struc­tive."He said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship should own up and de­fend the pol­i­cy or re­move it in an open and trans­par­ent way.Row­ley said: "Any eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion or so­cial in­sta­bil­i­ty that aris­es out of this, the PNM holds the Gov­ern­ment ful­ly re­spon­si­ble."He in­sist­ed the five per cent cap pol­i­cy had back­fired on the Gov­ern­ment.Row­ley re­it­er­at­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­er se­nior min­is­ters have re­peat­ed­ly cham­pi­oned the 'cap'.