Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty could come back to haunt it at the polls, ar­gu­ing that thou­sands of job loss­es and un­ful­filled promis­es are erod­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Beck­les said cit­i­zens would re­mem­ber the Gov­ern­ment’s per­for­mance when they next cast their bal­lots, point­ing to the up­com­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

“I hope you, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, will re­mem­ber what this Prime Min­is­ter and what this UNC Gov­ern­ment thinks of you,” Beck­les said.

Her com­ments came as she chal­lenged Gov­ern­ment claims that the loss of near­ly 6,000 jobs in the first quar­ter of 2026 re­flect­ed noth­ing more than sea­son­al em­ploy­ment trends.

Cit­ing Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) da­ta, Beck­les said em­ploy­ment fell by 5,900 be­tween the fourth quar­ter of 2025 and the first quar­ter of 2026, while the un­em­ploy­ment rate rose from 4.3 per cent to 5.4 per cent. She said women bore the brunt of the de­cline, with fe­male em­ploy­ment falling by 6,800 and fe­male un­em­ploy­ment in­creas­ing from 12,500 to 18,000.

Beck­les re­ject­ed Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Kennedy Swarats­ingh’s ex­pla­na­tion that the fig­ures re­flect­ed a nor­mal post-Christ­mas slow­down.

In­stead, she point­ed to wide­spread job loss­es across sev­er­al in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing pe­tro­le­um and gas, trans­porta­tion, con­struc­tion, elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter, agri­cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices.

She al­so cit­ed CSO da­ta cov­er­ing June 2025 to March 2026, which she said showed thou­sands more jobs lost across key sec­tors, in­clud­ing 7,100 in pe­tro­le­um and gas, 9,100 in con­struc­tion and 14,800 in com­mu­ni­ty, so­cial and per­son­al ser­vices.

Beck­les ques­tioned Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent claim that the Gov­ern­ment had cre­at­ed more than 15,000 jobs be­tween April 2025 and April 2026.

“I want to ask the Prime Min­is­ter whether she stands by the fig­ures they have pro­duced,” Beck­les said.

She al­so re­mind­ed the pub­lic that the UNC had cam­paigned on a promise of cre­at­ing 50,000 jobs.

“The biggest cries fol­low­ing the elec­tion were jobs, jobs, jobs,” she said, adding that re­quests for em­ploy­ment re­main the most com­mon is­sue raised at con­stituen­cy of­fices.

She al­so con­demned com­ments by Per­sad-Bisses­sar link­ing job loss­es to the dis­man­tling of what she de­scribed as state-fund­ed “ghost pro­grammes” and crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es.

The Prime Min­is­ter had ar­gued that some job loss­es re­sult­ed from the clo­sure of busi­ness­es tied to drug traf­fick­ing and the elim­i­na­tion of so­cial pro­grammes plagued by cor­rup­tion.

How­ev­er, Beck­les yes­ter­day ac­cused the Prime Min­is­ter of brand­ing or­di­nary cit­i­zens as “ghosts,” “free­ness” re­cip­i­ents and crim­i­nals.

“I am on­ly hop­ing that the women of T&T in par­tic­u­lar, the ones who are suf­fer­ing more than any­body else, are lis­ten­ing to what this Prime Min­is­ter is call­ing the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.

Beck­les al­so linked the em­ploy­ment con­cerns to un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the fu­ture of the Hilton Trinidad, warn­ing that as many as 300 work­ers could lose their jobs if the ho­tel’s lease is not re­newed.

She called on the Prime Min­is­ter and Trade Min­is­ter to ex­plain the sta­tus of lease ne­go­ti­a­tions, say­ing em­ploy­ees had been told the ho­tel could close with­in weeks if an agree­ment is not reached.

On na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, Beck­les main­tained that Gov­ern­ment’s roll­out of joint po­lice and mil­i­tary se­cu­ri­ty posts amount­ed to in­tro­duc­ing el­e­ments of the for­mer Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) pro­gramme “through the back door.”

She point­ed to re­cent pub­lic com­ments by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, ac­knowl­edg­ing that as­pects of the an­ti-crime plan would draw on the pro­posed ZOSO frame­work, de­spite De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge in­sist­ing the ini­tia­tive was not ZOSO.

“We are very clear of our will­ing­ness to work with the Gov­ern­ment,” Beck­les said, not­ing that the Op­po­si­tion had pre­vi­ous­ly pro­posed amend­ments to the ZOSO leg­is­la­tion rather than op­pos­ing it out­right.

She al­so ques­tioned whether the Gov­ern­ment had de­liv­ered mea­sur­able im­prove­ments in crime, say­ing it could not sim­ply “mark it­self” on its own per­for­mance.