Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get says the peo­ple of Point Fortin feel aban­doned and fed up of the emp­ty promis­es of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC). As for a re­cent poll which gave Dr Kei­th Row­ley a 50 per cent ap­proval rat­ing, Ro­get said he does not at­tach any weight or cred­i­bil­i­ty to such polls.

He ad­dressed the me­dia on Fri­day be­fore em­bark­ing on the sec­ond leg of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment's walk­a­bout in sup­port of the Move­ment for Jus­tice can­di­dates in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions. The can­di­dates were Michael "Buzz" Mills and Gar­rett Thomp­son for New­land, Ma­haica and Hol­ly­wood re­spec­tive­ly.

Lament­ing that the coun­try is in re­al prob­lems, Ro­get said, "And, so once we con­tin­ue along the di­rec­tion PNM till I dead or UNC till I dead or tell our­selves there is no oth­er op­tion, we all will die and that is a fact."

Like in oth­er com­mu­ni­ties they have tra­versed, Ro­get said res­i­dents of Point Fortin have ex­pressed a great sense of hope­less­ness and ne­glect. "We want to rep­re­sent a sense of hope, a sense of new di­rec­tion. There is quite a lot of ben­e­fit to come from an aban­don­ment of that old po­lit­i­cal or­der of UNC and PNM and point to some­thing else that will give you the type of pow­er to see your lives be­ing im­proved in the way that pro­vides for your fu­ture." Ro­get said the time has come to put an end to race-based vot­ing. "The vast amount of Point Fortin peo­ple were telling us we fed up of this thing about PNM till I dead, the UNC till I dead and we fed up of the PNM here in the Point Fortin be­cause it makes ab­solute­ly no sense."

As for the re­cent poll, he said if a poll rates him as do­ing a good job he will take no no­tice of it as those polls are ma­nip­u­lat­ed to bring about a cer­tain re­sult. "Who pays the piper calls the tune and, there­fore, I pay no re­spect, no re­gard, or no at­ten­tion to those polls." He said it was more than pass­ing strange that in the midst of may­hem, mur­ders, home in­va­sions, the shut­ting down of a ma­jor state en­ter­prise and un­em­ploy­ment, the Prime Min­is­ter and his gov­ern­ment got a pass mark. "It is like those who use the da­ta on Face­book and so­cial me­dia to ma­nip­u­late, it is no dif­fer­ent from that." Oth­er union mem­bers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the walk­a­bout were the T&T Postal Work­ers Union, In­dus­tri­al Gen­er­al and San­i­ta­tion Work­ers Trade Union, Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union, and the Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion.