Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Pres­i­dent of the All Trinidad Sug­ar and Gen­er­al?Work­ers' Trade Union Nir­van?Ma­haraj is call­ing on Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant?Ma­haraj to meet with the union to ad­dress the dis­missal of 21 staff mem­bers of Ca­roni (1975) Ltd's ten­an­cy-reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion project. Ma­haraj, who had in his pos­ses­sion 21 ter­mi­na­tion let­ters, said so dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the union's head­quar­ters at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va. He called the news brief­ing to dis­miss the min­is­ter's claim that no one had been dis­missed from the project. He said he was "shocked" by the min­is­ter's de­nial and the union was "ex­treme­ly sad­dened" by the turn of events sur­round­ing their dis­missal. He ques­tioned whether the min­is­ter had been "de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­in­formed" or "in­ad­ver­tent­ly mis­in­formed by his ad­vis­ers and those sur­round­ing him."

Last week 21 work­ers were is­sued ter­mi­na­tion let­ters. The project was es­tab­lished in 2009 to pro­vide le­gal ti­tle to more than 4,500 cane farm­ers, but was dis­band­ed two days be­fore In­de­pen­dence Day, ac­cord­ing to Ma­haraj. He said the work­ers were is­sued ter­mi­na­tion let­ters dat­ed Au­gust 28 and signed by Ca­roni (1975) Ltd CEO De­osaran Ja­groo. Ma­haraj said he wrote the min­is­ter on Fri­day af­ter a meet­ing with?Ja­groo failed to re­solve the is­sue. He said the union had been told Phase One of the project had end­ed and want­ed to de­ter­mine when Phase Two would be­gin and whether the dis­missed work­ers would be re-ab­sorbed. Ma­haraj said the union in­tend­ed to al­low the in­dus­tri­al-re­la­tions process to run its course. How­ev­er, he said, the ATS­G­WU was not rul­ing out protest or le­gal ac­tion since the ter­mi­na­tion let­ters breached the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act.

While Ma­haraj stopped short of ac­cus­ing Gov­ern­ment of turn­ing its back on the Ca­roni work­ers and cane farm­ers, he said the im­pres­sion was be­ing giv­en that?"Gov­ern­ment is quick­ly fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of the for­mer regime." He said the Unit­ed Na­tion­al?Con­gress (UNC) was a ten­ant of the union at Rien­zi Com­plex and that was the ex­tent of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the gov­ern­ment par­ty and the ATS­G­WU. "I want to make it very clear Rien­zi Com­plex does not be­long to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. Rien­zi Com­plex be­longs to the All Trinidad Gen­er­al?Work­ers Trade Union. The UNC is sim­ply a ten­ant of the (union.) It is a land­lord-ten­ant re­la­tion­ship at this time. "I will not sac­ri­fice the in­ter­ests of the mem­ber­ship of this union for any kind of po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy. I won't. My gen­er­al coun­cil won't do that," Ma­haraj de­clared. He called on the min­is­ter to ho­n­our the rul­ing of Jus­tice Deyals­ingh and give ex-Ca­roni work­ers their lands as promised. "The time has come to ex­pe­di­tious­ly set­tle the is­sue re­lat­ing to the for­mer Ca­roni work­ers and the 21 project work­ers," he added.