Kevon Felmine

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union (CWU) is call­ing on cit­i­zens to re­ject Gov­ern­ment's pro­pos­al to im­ple­ment aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures, which it ex­pects to be an­nounced in this month's na­tion­al bud­get, say­ing they are in­tend­ed to im­pose strict mea­sures on the labour force. The union be­lieves such an act would neg­a­tive­ly af­fect cit­i­zens' abil­i­ty to sur­vive through dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times.

In a press re­lease, the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the union John Julien said, "We have not­ed the veiled state­ments by the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Fi­nance soon af­ter meet­ing with of­fi­cials of the IMF, that aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures will be an­nounced in the bud­get for the fis­cal year 2012- 2013. "What this sug­gests is that this Gov­ern­ment in­tends to im­ple­ment strict mea­sures, main­ly against work­ers and or­di­nary cit­i­zens, to bring ex­pen­di­ture in line with rev­enue by in­sti­tut­ing cuts and tax in­creas­es."

John said in this light cit­i­zens should "re­ject and con­demn" the mea­sures, hav­ing been called up­on many times be­fore to tight­en their belts. He called on unions to mo­bilise and en­gage in protest ac­tion, to show Gov­ern­ment their dis­con­tent with what he called an­ti-work­er poli­cies.

"The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union as a pro­gres­sive work­ing class or­gan­i­sa­tion, says no to any aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures that would neg­a­tive­ly im­pact on the abil­i­ty of work­ing peo­ple, the un­em­ployed, poor and or­di­nary cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go to sur­vive in this chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment. "And the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship pol­i­cy of pri­vati­sa­tion which has as its tar­gets, state en­ti­ties such as TSTT, Petrotrin, Trin­mar Op­er­a­tions and First Cit­i­zens Bank," Julien said.