Kevon Felmine

The Gov­ern­ment can face em­bar­rass­ment if the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) suc­ceeds in its ef­forts to draw in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion to so­cial and labour un­rest in T&T at its "Moth­er of all March­es" in Port-of-Spain next month.Union­ists walked through the streets of San Fer­nan­do on Thurs­day seek­ing sup­port for the May 23 demon­stra­tion in protest of con­tro­ver­sies in the en­er­gy, health and labour sec­tors.Yes­ter­day they dis­trib­uted fly­ers in Ari­ma sen­si­tis­ing peo­ple about the planned pub­lic demon­stra­tion.

Pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) An­cel Ro­get ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of mis­rep­re­sent­ing the po­lit­i­cal and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate.He said she was mak­ing for­eign in­vestors be­lieve that the coun­try was run­ning smooth­ly when it was not.Giv­ing the PP an ul­ti­ma­tum, he said if it could not re­verse the prob­lems it had cre­at­ed, it should call the gen­er­al elec­tion now. He said 2015 would be too late as the coun­try would have "plunged fur­ther in­to a precipice of de­struc­tion."

He said, "Cer­tain­ly this Gov­ern­ment has a way of try­ing to por­tray that every­thing is okay in this coun­try. When they go abroad, they speak as if every­thing is okay, but every­thing is every­thing but okay. There­fore, we want to com­mu­ni­cate with the na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, that all is not well in T&T.

"You can­not go coun­try-hop­ping and say that you have a peace­ful in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate. When you do that, you mis­rep­re­sent what is hap­pen­ing at the lev­el of T&T. To­day, the cit­i­zens are not hap­py with the lev­el of gov­er­nance and we must con­vey that is a mas­sive way."

The union­ists at­tract­ed a lot of at­ten­tion as they met with taxi dri­vers, shop­pers and ven­dors, who added to the unions' list of com­plaints. Some even pledged to join the march along with re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions and po­lit­i­cal par­ties as they com­ment­ed on the re­cent dis­missals of for­mer peo­ple and so­cial de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh and tourism min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma who re­signed.

While Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been com­mend­ed by some sec­tors for tak­ing de­ci­sive ac­tion, Ro­get said the min­is­ters' re­moval had done noth­ing for the coun­try.He said the next min­is­ter that should be fired is En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine for his is­sues at Petrotrin.

"These two re­movals...does that im­prove the lives of peo­ple who can­not get trans­porta­tion, who are stuck in traf­fic? Does it im­prove the qual­i­ty of life in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties who are starved for re­sources? Does that im­prove the qual­i­ty of health­care at our var­i­ous hos­pi­tals? Does that stop the cor­rup­tion that is tak­ing place? "The an­swer is no and there­fore we need to ad­dress head-on these is­sues.

"Un­less we see the dis­missal of the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, the dis­missal of the top man­age­ment of Petrotrin and their board of di­rec­tors and sim­i­lar en­ter­pris­es, we will con­tin­ue to speak out. We are not im­pressed with the dis­missal of these two min­is­ters. All of them must go and we must put the coun­try back in a prop­er foot­ing, where there is re­spect for cit­i­zens and work­ers in this coun­try."Leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) David Ab­du­lah said he had pre­dict­ed when his par­ty left, the PP, the Gov­ern­ment would crum­ble.

"The dis­missal of min­is­ters Ra­mad­hars­ingh and Shar­ma are re­al­ly man­i­fes­ta­tions of a deep­er malaise with­in the Gov­ern­ment. It is al­so en­dem­ic of cor­rup­tion and it is for those rea­sons why we left the part­ner­ship. We knew when we left there would be many more ex­am­ples of bad gov­er­nance."Ab­du­lah said the Gov­ern­ment was now stum­bling and had lost the pub­lic's con­fi­dence through im­prop­er lead­er­ship.