Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment has as­sured cer­tain pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of labour is­sues, af­ter yes­ter­day's meet­ing be­tween Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader David Ab­du­lah and UNC deputy leader Roodal Mooni­lal. Mooni­lal in­di­cat­ed this af­ter meet­ing for al­most two hours with Ab­du­lah. He said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in­struct­ed him to meet with Ab­du­lah af­ter she re­ceived a let­ter from Ab­du­lah last Sun­day when MSJ had called on the Gov­ern­ment to tack­le var­i­ous na­tion­al is­sues by May 24.

If not, the MSJ stat­ed, it would have to "re­con­sid­er its po­si­tion" in the coali­tion Gov­ern­ment. Mooni­lal said yes­ter­day: "At the meet­ing with Mr Ab­du­lah, we had a long talk about the gov­er­nance chal­lenges fac­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion, our pub­lic pol­i­cy po­si­tions on is­sues and mat­ters of so­cial and labour pol­i­cy, in­clud­ing chal­lenges in labour law and pol­i­cy."

He said he was cer­tain that some of the is­sues raised by Ab­du­lah would be dis­cussed at the Prime Min­is­ter's up­com­ing meet­ing with lead­ers of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship at mon­thend . "But we un­der­stood from Mr Ab­du­lah that the MSJ's per­spec­tive is to deal with a cou­ple of the is­sues as ear­ly as we can...so yes, we will be look­ing at labour is­sues for in­stance, with pri­or­i­ty," Mooni­lal said.

He not­ed, for in­stance, that the Gov­ern­ment would be pre­sent­ing leg­is­la­tion to in­crease ma­ter­ni­ty ben­e­fits (from 13 weeks' leave to 14 weeks) at to­mor­row's Par­lia­ment ses­sion. He said that for the first time in 20 years, an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee would be ex­am­in­ing the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act (IRA) and oth­er labour laws.

Mooni­lal said he al­so raised the Gov­ern­ment's labour achieve­ments which Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol Mcleod out­lined re­cent­ly. "So our talk was very fruit­ful and pro­duc­tive and I cer­tain­ly un­der­stood much more than I read in the press on the is­sue," he said. "Mr Ab­du­lah said no ul­ti­ma­tum was ever giv­en and he re­mains a com­mit­ted mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment. "So leav­ing our meet­ing, I was very con­fi­dent of the Part­ner­ship's fu­ture."

Ab­du­lah said yes­ter­day's meet­ing was a pre­lim­i­nary ses­sion which did not get in­to spe­cif­ic ne­go­ti­a­tion of MSJ's con­cerns. "It was cor­dial and a use­ful ex­change, but it was gen­er­al back­ground dis­cus­sion," he added. Ab­du­lah re­fused to re­spond to crit­i­cisms of MSJ's move which were made by To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) leader Ash­worth.

"We sent our state­ment to all the lead­ers and TOP would have seen it so I'm not go­ing to re­spond to that," Ab­du­lah said. "Every­body needs to con­sid­er what we've said. "The next best thing is for the lead­ers to meet and dis­cuss the is­sues we put on the ta­ble."