Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

"The time for ac­tion is now," Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get de­clared, as he called on the work­ing class to march to the of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar next fort­night to de­mand im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Work­ers Agen­da.Ro­get was ad­dress­ing hun­dreds of work­ers at Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions in Fyz­abad yes­ter­day.Say­ing ex­ploita­tion, po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion, nepo­tism, in­com­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion were the hall­mark of the Gov­ern­ment, Ro­get said on Ju­ly 5, work­ers will be go­ing straight to Per­sad-Bisses­sar with their de­mands."In our thou­sands we will show that the pow­er of the peo­ple is greater than the peo­ple in pow­er! It's time for us to hit the streets," Ro­get said."We know how they like to con­trol the po­lice, so we are giv­ing them ad­vance no­tice. If you are se­ri­ous about the is­sues of the peo­ple, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er (Stephen Williams), you will grant us per­mis­sion. We will be go­ing straight to the head of the Gov­ern­ment."

Say­ing he is no friend of Patrick Man­ning, Ro­get said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) did not have the sup­port of the labour move­ment, ex­cept for a "few sell-out trade union­ists."He al­so ex­pressed dis­gust that PNM peo­ple were be­ing vic­timised by the PP. He al­so ac­cused his pre­de­ces­sor, Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod, of not car­ing about the plight of the work­ing class."Em­ploy­ers are tak­ing out in­junc­tions left, right and cen­tre against work­ers and trade unions, while there is a deaf­en­ing si­lence from the Min­is­ter of Labour, him­self a promi­nent for­mer labour leader," he said.As the crowds erupt­ed in cheers, Ro­get said while McLeod boast­ed about "re­mov­ing ap­pli­ca­tions from the In­dus­tri­al Court to de­cer­ti­fy two trade unions, the stark re­al­i­ty is, that the same law that al­lows the em­ploy­er to do this re­mains on the law books."Ro­get al­so ac­cused Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai of us­ing the re­cent­ly-pub­lished Cen­tral Bank Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port to sug­gest that the econ­o­my is im­prov­ing and that growth is in­creas­ing."They pulled out from the re­port that in 2011, growth was mi­nus 2.6 per cent, and that in 2012 growth reached a pos­i­tive of .2 per cent," he said."But what they did not and would not tell you is that our debt to GDP went from 33.4 per cent in 2011 to an un­prece­dent­ed 39.7 per cent in 2012. This means that our debt lev­els are ris­ing and ris­ing fast."

He added that de­spite the wan­ton spend­ing and $50 bil­lion-plus deficit bud­get, the min­is­ter had re­quest­ed an ad­di­tion­al $8 bil­lion dol­lars.Whilst there have been lit­tle ac­tiv­i­ty in the con­struc­tion sec­tor, Ro­get said the Gov­ern­ment has not been able to stim­u­late the econ­o­my."Their ex­ces­sive bor­row­ing is an at­tempt to hide the fact that the econ­o­my has con­tract­ed. Sim­ply put, we are spend­ing much more than we are mak­ing," Ro­get said.He al­so said rev­enue in the en­er­gy sec­tor has de­creased."While LNG pro­duc­tion re­mained the same, in­dige­nous crude pro­duc­tion, oil ex­ports and re­fin­ery through­put have all fall­en dra­mat­i­cal­ly," he said.He added that the PP was the most cor­rupt gov­ern­ment in the his­to­ry of T&T and this was fu­elling crime."There is a link be­tween the cor­rup­tion and crime. It has been proven time and again, that with the in­crease in cor­rup­tion and white-col­lar crime, there is al­ways a cor­re­spond­ing in­crease in vi­o­lent crimes and mur­ders."

Ro­get added that an ex­am­i­na­tion of the re­cent Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­port, on T&T's pub­lic ac­counts for the fi­nan­cial year 2012, shows in­com­pe­tence, cor­rupt prac­tices and wastage.Ro­get out­lined the in­creas­es giv­en to each min­istry. He said the re­port al­so re­vealed that in sev­en min­istries, there were in­creas­es in ex­pen­di­ture by more than 50 per cent from the pe­ri­od 2011 to 2012."The Min­istry of Sport, ex­pen­di­ture in­creased by 1,275 per cent, Min­istry of Works in­creased by 378 per cent, the Min­istry of Trans­port in­creased by 386 per cent and the Min­istry of Plan­ning in­creased by 232 per cent," he said.He al­so dis­closed that the Jus­tice Min­istry in­creased by 222 per cent, Gen­der Min­istry got 194 per cent and Hous­ing Min­istry in­creased by 90 per cent.He al­so said rental pay­ments for var­i­ous min­istries were to­talling hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars and yet signed lease agree­ments were not pro­duced.Ro­get urged Petrotrin work­ers not to ac­cept VSEP."They are now of­fer­ing VSEP, send­ing home work­ers with many years of ex­pe­ri­ence and com­pe­tence," he said."To­day, I say to all of those work­ers, you must stand your grounds and refuse those VSEP pack­ages. Do not be en­ticed in­to giv­ing away your jobs. Let them take God out of their thoughts and send you home and all hell will break loose," he said.Af­ter the ral­ly, work­ers were treat­ed to a cul­tur­al show.