PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Will the mid­dle to low­er class ben­e­fit from the Drag­on gas deal?

This is the ques­tion raised by Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre Michael An­nisette af­ter news that Venezuela had grant­ed a li­cence for op­er­a­tions to be­gin in the Drag­on gas field.

He said while the news was good as it should bring in­creased rev­enues for T&T, he is wor­ried that the work­ing class will not ben­e­fit from this arrange­ment.

“Yes. It will gen­er­ate rev­enues for Trinidad and To­ba­go. But the ques­tion that I will con­tin­ue to ask and we, the labour move­ment be­ing NATUC, is how the mon­ey is be­ing dis­trib­uted with the peo­ple, the work­ers, the dis­ad­van­taged and the poor ... “

Anisette, in a phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, said, “That is what is crit­i­cal and that is what is im­por­tant. For too long we have seen where the work­ing class, the mid­dle class is be­ing called up­on to car­ry the brunt of the bur­den with the eco­nom­ic cri­sis–be it the glob­al, be it the lo­cal ...”

An­nisette wants pol­i­cy put in place to en­sure that there is a sig­nif­i­cant trick­le down to the work­ing class.