GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The up­com­ing 2026 na­tion­al bud­get must piv­ot from pure­ly fi­nan­cial met­rics to a peo­ple-cen­tred fis­cal strat­e­gy that pri­ori­tis­es the eco­nom­ic well-be­ing of the work­force and the vul­ner­a­ble.

This is the po­si­tion ar­tic­u­lat­ed by the labour move­ment, rep­re­sent­ed by Michael An­nisette, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (Natuc) who spoke on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme yes­ter­day.

“The bud­get must have fis­cal space that is peo­ple-cen­tred be­cause labour con­no­tates all kinds of things. If you say a peo­ple-cen­tred bud­get, it cov­ers the vul­ner­a­ble in the so­ci­ety, which is crit­i­cal be­cause we must have a so­cial net to ad­dress those re­al so­cial is­sues that af­fect the sin­gle par­ents, those work­ers who were sent home, right, who are there lan­guish­ing.

“So we hope that the fis­cal space in the bud­get will re­alise those re­al­i­ties and, more im­por­tant­ly ad­dress the is­sue of gov­ern­ment wages across the board,” An­nisette said as he dis­agreed that the bud­get ought to be seen sole­ly through a math­e­mat­i­cal lens.

“The bud­get is not a math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­la. It is not about on­ly in­vestors. It is not just a fig­ure. A bud­get is about peo­ple. With­out peo­ple, you can’t have a bud­get. And with­out peo­ple, you can’t have a so­ci­ety and with­out work­ers, you can’t have pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and de­vel­op your econ­o­my,” he em­pha­sised.

With re­cent large-scale re­struc­tur­ing and lay­offs with so­cial pro­grammes like the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) high­light­ing a deep rift in na­tion­al de­ci­sion-mak­ing, the labour move­ment strong­ly ad­vo­cates for a tri­par­tite ap­proach—in­volv­ing gov­ern­ment, em­ploy­ers, and labour—in any de­ci­sion that fun­da­men­tal­ly im­pacts the lives of cit­i­zens, said An­nisette.

“What we’re talk­ing about, cer­tain gangs get­ting, ghost gangs, and a se­ries of things, but there’s a way to deal with it. We in the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre, our view con­tin­ues to be that in those kinds of cir­cum­stances, you must have that so­cial di­a­logue, you must have that tri­par­tite ap­proach where we sit down as a peo­ple, as a so­ci­ety, and de­ter­mine how do we move for­ward. I do not share the view, with the great­est of re­spect, that that is a de­ci­sion for the min­is­ter to make. That it is a de­ci­sion for the prime min­is­ter alone to make, or it is a de­ci­sion for the Cab­i­net alone to make.

“It im­pacts peo­ple. It im­pacts your so­ci­ety in a very fun­da­men­tal way, and the peo­ple’s ap­proach and the tri­par­tite ap­proach and so­cial di­a­logue must be part of the new eco­nom­ic mod­el that speaks to, when Trinidad have a prob­lem, it’s a so­ci­etal prob­lem, and there­fore, the stake­hold­ers must be in­volved in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process,” An­nisette added.

He al­so high­light­ed un­re­solved wage dis­par­i­ties—es­pe­cial­ly among dock­work­ers still earn­ing decade-old salaries as he stressed that eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery de­pends on em­pow­er­ing work­ers, not sidelin­ing them.

De­spite re­cent lay­offs and re­struc­tur­ing, An­nisette re­mains hope­ful that the gov­ern­ment would ho­n­our its promis­es and em­bed labour con­cerns in­to the na­tion­al bud­get.