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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Annisette's early red flag on state boards

by

12 days ago
20250626

One of the rea­sons the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) won the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion by a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant ma­jor­i­ty was thou­sands of vot­ers be­lieved the par­ty's elec­tion slo­gan, 'When UNC wins, every­body wins.'

One of the most note­wor­thy re­sults of the elec­tion is that the UNC won La Brea and Point Fortin, two con­stituen­cies long held by the cur­rent Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). Clyde El­der, who served as Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers' Union sec­re­tary gen­er­al, won the La Brea con­stituen­cy and Ernesto Ke­sar, who cur­rent­ly served as Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent, took Point Fortin.

Giv­en the im­por­tance of labour rep­re­sen­ta­tion in win­ning those two con­stituen­cies, there is a mea­sure of irony that an­oth­er trade union leader, Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette, was the first to raise pub­lic con­cerns about the lack of di­ver­si­ty and labour rep­re­sen­ta­tion on state boards.

An­nisette first raised the is­sue about the ab­sence of labour rep­re­sen­ta­tives on boards ap­point­ed by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion dur­ing an ad­dress at the Labour Day Ral­ly in Fyz­abad last Thurs­day.

In a fol­low-up in­ter­view with this news­pa­per, Mr An­nisette said the ap­par­ent lack of eth­nic and class di­ver­si­ty on the state boards whose di­rec­tors have been ap­point­ed so far, was caus­ing con­cern in the trade union sec­tor.

“Yes, ob­vi­ous­ly, if we are se­ri­ous about break­ing this eth­nic kind of pol­i­tics and race pol­i­tics, the UNC, in my hum­ble opin­ion, must rise above that...There must be di­ver­si­ty not on­ly in what we say but in what we do. If you love us and we are all your chil­dren, then there should be no bas­tard chil­dren in any fam­i­ly,” An­nisette said.

Mr An­nisette said he was par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about the com­po­si­tion of boards at the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT), Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny (MTS), Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC).

The vet­er­an trade union­ist's com­plaints about the lack of di­ver­si­ty on those im­por­tant boards are time­ly, ap­pro­pri­ate and rel­e­vant.

It is clear that the UNC in gov­ern­ment needs to make a greater ef­fort to bal­ance the le­git­i­mate need to re­ward those who helped them re­turn to pow­er against the re­quire­ment to en­sure the di­rec­tors who are ap­point­ed re­flect T&T's di­ver­si­ty, as well as be­ing in­ter­est­ed in serv­ing the pop­u­la­tion and not them­selves.

Mr An­nisette quite right­ly not­ed the lack of labour rep­re­sen­ta­tives on new­ly ap­point­ed boards, point­ing out that as a pol­i­cy, "labour must have in­put on state boards, es­pe­cial­ly where there are ma­jor­i­ty-recog­nised unions. That is part of tri-par­tism.”

But the Gov­ern­ment needs to go be­yond labour rep­re­sen­ta­tion and pay much clos­er at­ten­tion to the lack of eth­nic and gen­der di­ver­si­ty, the pauci­ty of ap­point­ments of To­bag­o­ni­ans and even the ab­sence of dif­fer­ent­ly abled di­rec­tors on state boards.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ap­peared to be aware of the se­ri­ous dam­age that the per­cep­tion of the lack of di­ver­si­ty on state boards can do to her par­ty's longevi­ty in of­fice, when she ini­tial­ly re­spond­ed to An­nisette, say­ing, “Those who think it’s tak­ing too long, re­mem­ber Rome was not built in a day. We are work­ing on it.”

Clear­ly, she needs to work hard­er and smarter on this is­sue.


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