The Joint Trade Union Movement will match for three days in an attempt to convince Government to change their minds on the closure of the Petrotrin refinery.
The march, titled 'Oil Joins Sugar: The Mother of all Marches,' will begin in Point-a-Pierre next Wednesday, Oilfield Workers Trade Union President General Ancel Roget said outside the Ministry of Finance earlier today.
"We are very concerned about what is going to happen to Trinidad and Tobago when the Government closes down Petrotrin," said Roget, who said the march was so named due to the fate that befell Caroni 1975 Ltd, which was closed in 2003.
"The point we wish to make, the same PNM Government would have decimated the sugar industry. We saw what they did with Caroni and made a lot of promises to the Caroni workers. Today, those workers are still all over the place, there are promises still unfulfilled but more importantly, they decimated an industry and they are about to decimate the oil industry."
He added: "We'd like to highlight that once again the Government is about to close down a major revenue stream and put some 9,000 workers out of a bread and decimate the southern community and ultimately it's going to affect the economy."
Public Services Association and National Trade Union Centre president Watson Duke pledged solidarity to cause.
"We cannot just stand by and whistle and engage in wishful thinking, we have to do something," Duke said.
"We need to say to the nation in this democracy, that we object to what the Government is doing and thus what we will be doing on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday is a demonstration of our feelings of discontent."
The march will begin on Wednesday at the Petrotrin roundabout in Point-a-Pierre at 9 am and end at the Rienzi Complex, Couva, at 4 pm, stay over at that venue, then resume on Thursday from Rienzi Complex at 6 am. From there, they will head to the Aranguez Savannah, San Juan. On Friday, the final leg will continue from Aranguez to the Brian Lara Promenade, Port-of-Spain.
Unions will address workers on each day of the march at the overnight venue. On Friday, the unions say, a massive rally will be held in Port-of-Spain.
Roget said the march has also attracted foreign interest and he expects international media to cover the event.