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Saturday, July 26, 2025

What about NTAC meeting Mr PM?

by

1901 days ago
20200512
Editorial

Editorial

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley held a hasti­ly-con­vened meet­ing with Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez and her del­e­ga­tion on March 27. The PM has in­sist­ed the meet­ing on­ly dis­cussed the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The Op­po­si­tion con­tin­ues to ques­tion that meet­ing, al­leg­ing it may be linked to a Paria fu­el ship­ment deal that went through Aru­ba and even­tu­al­ly end­ed up in Venezuela. They fear the deal may have im­per­illed T&T be­cause coun­tries found do­ing busi­ness with Venezuela could face stiff US sanc­tions.

Yes­ter­day, Venezue­lan me­dia un­der­cut PM Row­ley’s po­si­tion, re­port­ing that Julio Borges, the pres­i­den­tial com­mis­sion­er for for­eign af­fairs in Venezuela, claimed the dis­cus­sions in Port-of-Spain in­volved oil and gas —not COVID-19.

On­ly those in the room for the talks know what re­al­ly hap­pened. As the days go by, more will no doubt un­fold.

What we find strange is that while the PM found time to meet with the Venezue­lan del­e­ga­tion, he has yet to re­spond to cor­re­spon­dence sent to him on April 16 by a joint busi­ness and labour team ask­ing for an emer­gency meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Coun­cil (NTAC) to dis­cuss jobs and the econ­o­my in the cur­rent COVID-19 cri­sis. One would think that too would be top of the PM’s agen­da.

The joint let­ter not­ed that “these are ex­tra­or­di­nary times and the coun­try is fac­ing a very grave cri­sis. The pri­vate sec­tor and the labour move­ment, un­der­stand­ing the se­ri­ous­ness of the cri­sis, know that we must come to­geth­er to help the na­tion through this cri­sis.”

Labour clear­ly un­der­stands that the COVID cri­sis has flat­tened our econ­o­my— and the world’s. Jobs are at stake. Many busi­ness­es have tem­porar­i­ly closed and may not re­open, as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce re­cent­ly warned.

How of­ten does a prime min­is­ter get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring ad­ver­saries to­geth­er to find com­mon ground on a na­tion­al cri­sis? En­gag­ing in di­a­logue with labour and busi­ness could on­ly re­dound to the ben­e­fit of the en­tire coun­try.

The NTAC was es­tab­lished in 2015, ear­ly in the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion but in the last four years very lit­tle has come out of the coun­cil.

The fact is COVID-19 has brought home the re­al­i­ty that the econ­o­my and job se­cu­ri­ty are un­der threat. In­di­vid­ual unions and em­ploy­ers have been meet­ing to dis­cuss what can be done. Both groups recog­nise that “un­for­tu­nate­ly, such bi­par­tite col­lab­o­ra­tion is not enough to achieve sta­bil­i­ty of short term em­ploy­ment and set the foun­da­tion for na­tion­al re­cov­ery.”

It is ex­treme­ly dis­ap­point­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter has not seen it fit to re­spond to this call to ac­tion. Dr Row­ley has wit­nessed COVID-19’s im­pact on thou­sands of cit­i­zens. His Gov­ern­ment has had to ex­pend hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to en­sure peo­ple sur­vive through this un­cer­tain pe­ri­od. Sure­ly, he must un­der­stand the im­por­tance of get­ting peo­ple back to work and not hav­ing to de­pend on the state.

We hope Dr Row­ley will seize the mo­ment and do the right thing. Ten of thou­sands of cit­i­zens—and our crip­pled econ­o­my— are de­pend­ing on it.


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