PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher

@guardian.co.tt

The well-be­ing of the now-dis­placed News­day staff was in fo­cus as the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go held its first elec­tion in over four years on Sat­ur­day.

Both out­go­ing in­ter­im pres­i­dent Dale Enoch and new­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent Pri­or Be­har­ry made calls on News­day man­age­ment to pro­vide sup­port for the work­ers fol­low­ing the news­pa­per’s clo­sure.

On Fri­day, it was an­nounced by News­day that the news­pa­per was wind­ing up op­er­a­tions af­ter 32 years.

‘To say it is sad, it’s an un­der­state­ment. I am not sure News­day work­ers were ready for this. Those who re­mained, I’m not sure that they were ready,” said Enoch be­fore vot­ing start­ed at the Na­tion­al Li­brary in Port-of-Spain.

“This is a blow to the pro­fes­sion and the pro­fes­sion­als. It is my view that there may be a need for some in­ter­ven­tion on the part of the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, as well as oth­er bod­ies at­tached to lo­cal me­dia; our col­leagues may need guid­ance, coun­selling, even sup­port,” he said.

Be­har­ry, in his first state­ment as Pres­i­dent, echoed that sen­ti­ment and called on the News­day man­age­ment to as­sist the dis­placed staff.

“We want to say that MATT will try our best to see what we can do for the em­ploy­ees. We un­der­stand that most of the em­ploy­ees were not told that they’re go­ing to close down. In light of that, we are call­ing on the man­age­ment and the own­ers of News­day to en­sure that the staff, the per­ma­nent staff, and even the free­lancers, are prop­er­ly com­pen­sat­ed,” Be­har­ry said.

Enoch stressed the as­so­ci­a­tion had a cru­cial role in pro­tect­ing a pro­fes­sion that was un­der grow­ing threat.

“There are oth­er in­fringe­ments, so to speak, tak­ing place in me­dia, lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly, and me­dia as­so­ci­a­tions’ role and as­so­ci­a­tions such as MATT must come to the fore and save jour­nal­ism,” said Enoch, who al­so ex­pressed wor­ry about re­cent re­port­ed dis­missals at the state-owned me­dia house TTT Lim­it­ed.

The oth­er mem­bers of the new MATT ex­ec­u­tive are Ke­jan Haynes, Vice Pres­i­dent; Phillip Math­e­son, Sec­re­tary; Shiv­an­ni Lal, As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary; Vin­d­har Suraj, Trea­sur­er and Floor Mem­bers, Jer­maine Cruick­shank, and Yvonne Webb.

The ex­ec­u­tive will serve from 2026 to 2028.