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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Govt wants to welcome trade union movement back to NTAC

by

Sharlene Rampersad
1086 days ago
20220718
Trade Unions during last month’s Labour Day march in Fyzabad.

Trade Unions during last month’s Labour Day march in Fyzabad.

RISHI RAGOONATH

The glob­al in­crease in the price of oil gave the coun­try an $8 bil­lion wind­fall.

Two mil­lion dol­lars of that was al­lo­cat­ed to the bud­get when the Gov­ern­ment pre­sent­ed the mid-year bud­get re­view, now the Prime Min­is­ter has some oth­er ideas of how the rest can be spent.

“I have just said that it is pos­si­ble for the gov­ern­ment to make half of the mon­ey we have avail­able from the in­creased earn­ings now, to make that avail­able to pub­lic ser­vants now but that will have to be with the agree­ment of their lead­ers,” Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day.

He was speak­ing dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s when he made the of­fer.

Row­ley said if this of­fer is ac­cept­ed, it will bring the ne­go­ti­a­tions to an end much faster than the es­tab­lished pro­ce­dure.

He al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­vite the Joint Trade Union Move­ment back to the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (NTAC.)

“I would like to ap­peal to labour to re­turn to NTAC with­out pre-con­di­tions and the Gov­ern­ment would wel­come them back with­out pre-con­di­tions,” he said.

NTAC is an ad­vi­so­ry body that pro­vides tech­ni­cal ad­vice to the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and it is made up of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Gov­ern­ment, trade unions and the pri­vate sec­tor.

Sev­er­al days ago, JTUM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette said the labour move­ment would not re­turn to NTAC.

“Un­til and un­less there’s a gen­uine at­tempt by this Gov­ern­ment to gen­uine­ly en­gage the labour move­ment in mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions, we are not go­ing back there. We won’t be used as a PR stunt, right by this gov­ern­ment,” An­nisette said then.

Yes­ter­day, the Prime Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment has al­so de­cid­ed on a pol­i­cy re­gard­ing the fu­el sub­sidy, which cur­rent­ly stands at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $300 mil­lion per month.

“We could set a cap on how much we are pre­pared to spend of the pub­lic earn­ings…we think $1B is a rea­son­able amount,” Row­ley said.

He said if the in­ter­na­tion­al oil price ris­es fur­ther, con­sumers will have to bear the brunt of the in­crease but if prices drop, cit­i­zens will ben­e­fit. Row­ley said the lat­est news out of the Unit­ed States showed fu­el prices were be­ing forcibly low­ered. He ex­pects this to im­pact the glob­al price of oil.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so boast­ed that this coun­try’s in­fla­tion rate stands at 5 per cent, de­spite the fi­nan­cial im­pacts of the pan­dem­ic.

He said T&T was in a much bet­ter po­si­tion than many oth­er coun­tries around the world.

An­nounc­ing that this year’s bud­get would be pre­sent­ed ear­li­er than the usu­al Oc­to­ber date, the Prime Min­is­ter said the coun­try can al­so look for­ward to a full re­port from the Fi­nance Min­is­ter, Colm Im­bert on the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion on Sep­tem­ber 2.


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