Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

A coali­tion of 13 in­de­pen­dent trade unions, call­ing them­selves the Pro­gres­sive In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions, has for­mal­ly re­quest­ed an ur­gent meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar over State of Emer­gency (SoE) reg­u­la­tions re­strict­ing pub­lic demon­stra­tions with­in 500 me­tres of 15 des­ig­nat­ed lo­ca­tions, even as the Gov­ern­ment sig­nals it is not back­ing down on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures in­tro­duced un­der the emer­gency frame­work.

The re­quest was de­liv­ered at White Hall yes­ter­day by a del­e­ga­tion led by Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe, who said the unions were seek­ing di­a­logue rather than con­fronta­tion over what they de­scribe as an im­prac­ti­cal re­stric­tion on protest ac­tiv­i­ty.

The is­sue cen­tres on a 500-me­tre ex­clu­sion zone that unions ar­gue se­vere­ly lim­its their abil­i­ty to stage vis­i­ble demon­stra­tions and rep­re­sent work­ers ef­fec­tive­ly.

Dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, Ashe di­rect­ly chal­lenged the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of the rule, even us­ing a mea­sur­ing tape to il­lus­trate the dis­tance.

He con­firmed that the let­ter was re­ceived by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and ex­pressed hope that a date would be set for en­gage­ment.

“...This is go­ing to give the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter an op­por­tu­ni­ty to show that she is ob­jec­tive, to show that she is will­ing to meet with the mem­ber­ship, meet with the peo­ple,” he said, “You said you are the Prime Min­is­ter who loves her peo­ple. Show some of that love, meet with us.”

He added that unions were pre­pared to work around the Prime Min­is­ter’s sched­ule.

“We’re not ask­ing for much, a meet­ing. We know that you are very busy, you tell us when, we will be there.”

Ques­tions were al­so raised about the ab­sence of Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get from the del­e­ga­tion.

Ashe de­clined to spec­u­late on the ab­sence but said all unions had been in­formed of the ini­tia­tive.

He dis­missed sug­ges­tions of in­ter­nal di­vi­sion with­in the labour move­ment.

“There’s no shift. There’s no rift. There’s no di­vi­sion,” Ashe said, “We, these 13 of us, we are here.”

Ashe stressed that the unions were not op­pos­ing the State of Emer­gency it­self or broad­er se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

“We’re not at­tack­ing the Gov­ern­ment. Let us be very clear. We said it on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions, we are in no way try­ing to fight the Gov­ern­ment,” he said.

“We know we are in agree­ment with what­ev­er mea­sures they would put in place to main­tain safe­ty of the cit­i­zen­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

How­ev­er, he said the protest re­stric­tion had not been prop­er­ly dis­cussed be­fore im­ple­men­ta­tion.

“This par­tic­u­lar move, we don’t be­lieve that it was the best move,” he said.

“We don’t be­lieve that it was the most well thought of be­cause there was no di­a­logue, no com­mu­ni­ca­tion and in the ab­sence of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, some­times you have the wrong de­ci­sion be­ing made”, he said.

He warned that the re­stric­tion would un­der­mine de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights, “Every time we go some­where, we have to work with an emer­gency. That’s ridicu­lous, man, we are a democ­ra­cy. We are ac­cus­tomed to cer­tain rights and free­doms, and why would our Gov­ern­ment want to take those rights away from us?”

De­spite their crit­i­cism, the unions said they re­main open to ne­go­ti­a­tion.

“We are will­ing. Let us get to­geth­er. Let’s dis­cuss. Let us see if we could find a com­pro­mise and mid­dle ground,” Ashe said.

“Madam Prime Min­is­ter, show that you are will­ing to meet with us and let us find a so­lu­tion.”

He added that any fu­ture course of ac­tion would be de­cid­ed col­lec­tive­ly if a meet­ing is not grant­ed.

“All the in­de­pen­dent unions who are here, we will get to­geth­er, and we will de­ter­mine the way for­ward”, Ashe added.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, re­spond­ing to the unions af­ter their first com­plaint, has main­tained that se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures un­der the State of Emer­gency, in­clud­ing protest re­stric­tions near sen­si­tive lo­ca­tions, are nec­es­sary to safe­guard pub­lic or­der and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty dur­ing the emer­gency pe­ri­od.