With an al­leged 20,000 pub­lic sec­tor work­ers dis­missed since the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) as­sumed of­fice, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les has called on non­govern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) to unite with his par­ty to con­front what he de­scribes as es­ca­lat­ing so­cial in­jus­tice.

Speak­ing at a pub­lic meet­ing in Ch­agua­nas on Sat­ur­day evening, Gon­za­les said the dis­missal of CEPEP and Forestry Di­vi­sion work­ers—many la­belled as PNM sup­port­ers—was not mere­ly a po­lit­i­cal bat­tle, but a na­tion­al one. He urged NGOs to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty, stress­ing that the 20,000 af­fect­ed work­ers in­clude cit­i­zens from “PNM, UNC, church, mosque, tem­ples, NGOs and oth­er groups.”

He cit­ed the In­dus­tri­al Court’s $4.3 mil­lion award to 13 for­mer To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly work­ers whose con­tracts were ter­mi­nat­ed af­ter the 2022 change of ad­min­is­tra­tion, warn­ing the Gov­ern­ment faces mount­ing le­gal penal­ties.

“It is not com­ing from Bar­ry Padarath’s pock­et. It is not com­ing from Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pock­et. It is com­ing from the pock­ets of the tax­pay­ers of this coun­try,” Gon­za­les said.

Gon­za­les said that while on his way to the meet­ing on Sat­ur­day night, he re­ceived a What­sApp mes­sage from a CEPEP work­er who could not af­ford to at­tend. The woman, a sin­gle moth­er from Five Rivers, Ari­ma, had re­cent­ly lost her job with a CEPEP con­trac­tor. Her heart­felt mes­sage, he said, moved him deeply.

The woman shared the dif­fi­cul­ty of rais­ing three chil­dren alone and her grow­ing fear of food in­se­cu­ri­ty and un­paid debts now that her small su­per­vi­sor’s wage was gone. Gon­za­les claimed the woman ex­pressed re­gret over vot­ing for the UNC in the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion, say­ing she felt mis­led and aban­doned.

“I did not ex­pect that I was vot­ing for my life and my fam­i­ly’s life to end up in this mess,” the mes­sage read.

Gon­za­les said the mes­sage al­so is­sued a warn­ing to oth­ers.

“This UNC Gov­ern­ment will face the wrath of God for their wicked­ness.”

Turn­ing back to the au­di­ence, Gon­za­les asked how many oth­ers now shared her plight. He said that while democ­ra­cy had re­sult­ed in the PNM’s tem­po­rary re­moval from of­fice, it was nev­er the in­ten­tion of the na­tion’s found­ing fa­thers that gov­er­nance would bring such hard­ship.

Ad­dress­ing state ap­point­ments, Gon­za­les said the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment al­ways aimed for boards that re­flect­ed the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion.

“You can­not put a board that looks like it comes from In­dia. You can­not put a board that looks like it came from Mozam­bique... You put a board in place that rep­re­sents the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go so that it would have the re­spect of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He claimed the cur­rent gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed boards that ex­clude key seg­ments like trade unions and grass­roots sup­port­ers.