Kevon Felmine

The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) has giv­en the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment a lit­tle more than two months to get it's af­fairs in or­der or else the MSJ will re­con­sid­er its place in the coali­tion. The Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar led-gov­ern­ment has un­til May 24, the sec­ond an­niver­sary of the Gov­ern­ment as­sum­ing of­fice, to ad­dress the con­cerns of the MSJ.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at a news con­fer­ence at Para­mount Build­ing, San Fer­nan­do, po­lit­i­cal leader of the MSJ Sen­a­tor David Ab­du­lah said a re­port out­lin­ing the frail­ties of the Gov­ern­ment would be giv­en to Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­view. Such is­sues to be dealt with in­clud­ed the Gov­ern­ment's five per cent wage cap, pos­si­ble pri­vati­sa­tion of Trin­mar and the ex­ces­sive use of force by the po­lice.

Ab­du­lah de­scribed the cur­rent in­dus­tri­al cli­mate be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in the coun­try as a lack of re­spect and re­gard for labour. He said the MSJ was in the Gov­ern­ment to act as the voice of the labour move­ment. In mean­time, Ab­du­lah an­nounced the par­ty's in­ten­tion to en­gage in a se­ries of pub­lic dis­cus­sions with stake­hold­ers through cot­tage meet­ings and walk­a­bouts.

He, how­ev­er, failed to clar­i­fy whether the par­ty would re­moved it­self from the coali­tion if the Gov­ern­ment refuse to ad­here to their rec­om­men­da­tions. He said: "The MSJ will hold the Gov­ern­ment to ac­count with re­spect to the is­sues that we have placed on the agen­da and will con­tin­ue our ap­praisal ex­er­cise as to whether the in­ter­est of labour and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty are be­ing ad­dressed. If by May 24, 2012 (the sec­ond an­niver­sary of the Part­ner­ship com­ing to of­fice) the Gov­ern­ment fails to gen­uine­ly ad­dress these is­sues, the MSJ will have no al­ter­na­tive but to re­con­sid­er our re­la­tion­ship with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship."

Ab­du­lah, who was ac­com­pa­nied by Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU), pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get and pres­i­dent of the Bankers, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) Vin­cent Cabr­era, re­ceived thun­der­ous sup­port from the par­ty's ex­ec­u­tive dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion.

Ro­get, who made the call for the par­ty to re­move it­self from the coali­tion gov­ern­ment, re­mained se­ri­ous for most of the meet­ing. When ques­tioned by the me­dia, he an­swered briefly that he was in full sup­port of the par­ty's de­ci­sion. Among the is­sues high­light­ed by Ab­du­lah were:

• Set­tle­ment of ne­go­ti­a­tions in a fair and eq­ui­table man­ner con­sis­tent with the free col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process

• Fair share of state re­sources to com­mu­ni­ties and eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of jobs

• Re­duced rights of land tenure and mas­sive in­crease of lease rates to farm­ers with­out con­sul­ta­tion

• Gov­er­nance-process of con­sti­tu­tion re­form and lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form; ad­dress­ing State sec­tor gov­er­nance; cut­ting out all forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion, po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion, cor­rup­tion, nepo­tism and pa­tron­age

• Get­ting rid of odi­ous sys­tems of con­tract labour in the pub­lic ser­vice and State sec­tor

• Pri­vati­sa­tion es­pe­cial­ly of Petrotrin (Trin­mar acreage) and First Cit­i­zens Bank

• Ad­vanc­ing the agen­da of labour law re­form

• The pro­tec­tion of the liveli­hoods of fish­er­folk

• Im­ple­ment­ing the cul­tur­al sec­tor's agen­da as com­mit­ted to in the man­i­festo

• Es­tab­lish­ing a pol­i­cy po­si­tion so as to stop the use of force by the po­lice ser­vice to frus­trate, in­tim­i­date and stop the le­git­i­mate and peace­ful ac­tiv­i­ties of civ­il so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing peace­ful protest ac­tion by work­ers and the rights of the me­dia.