Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Melanie Roberts-Radg­man has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of hypocrisy re­gard­ing work­ers, and she's warned the ad­min­is­tra­tion not to use work­ers or To­ba­go as pro­pa­gan­da "sound­bites".

"When I as­sess this Gov­ern­ment's treat­ment of work­ers, I can on­ly say shame, shame!" Roberts-Radg­man added in yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate on sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing for the 2025 Bud­get by $3.14 bil­lion.

Roberts-Radg­man rub­bished the Gov­ern­ment's view that the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment had un­der­bud­get­ed and had "done noth­ing" for T&T. She said not every­thing is done in a giv­en time since plans al­ways have to ad­just to glob­al en­vi­ron­ments. She list­ed de­vel­op­ments dur­ing the PNM's tenure.

"We utilised fis­cal con­ser­vatism, we were fis­cal­ly re­spon­si­ble to en­sure we could nav­i­gate and in­su­late the econ­o­my from ex­ter­nal eco­nom­ic shocks...de­ci­sions weren't al­ways easy or pop­u­lar, but that's the na­ture of gov­er­nance.

"At all times the col­lec­tive in­ter­est has to pre­vail over po­lit­i­cal pop­u­lar­i­ty...we showed up, we showed out and did ex­ceed­ing­ly well," Roberts-Radg­man de­clared.

She said the past gov­ern­ment's man­age­ment of the econ­o­my draws a very stark con­trast to, "The kin­da mad­ness, chaos and may­hem we're al­ready see­ing now: two months in of­fice and we're see­ing per­sons be­ing vic­timised at the whim and fan­cy of one per­son who has no busi­ness mak­ing the kind of de­ci­sions they're mak­ing.

"I start­ed off in union work as well, so it re­al­ly hurts when I hear this Gov­ern­ment tout­ing false no­tions about 'rep­re­sent­ing work­ers' and be­ing 'for work­ers'. It both­ers me when that's just be­ing tout­ed for the sake of ex­pe­di­en­cy and po­lit­i­cal gain - it's hyp­o­crit­i­cal!"

Roberts-Radg­man said last Fri­day's de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate the con­tracts of CEPEP con­trac­tors was a blow for 10,000 work­ers and fam­i­lies, "Bla­tant­ly placed on the bread­line. No warn­ing, no plan­ning, no eco­nom­ic as­sess­ment! Just the usu­al ex­cuse- 'PNM hire the con­trac­tors'. You telling me, in or­der to spite a hand­ful of al­leged 'PNM con­trac­tors', this Gov­ern­ment was will­ing to strip 10,000 vul­ner­a­ble work­ers of their em­ploy­ment, de­prive 10,000 fam­i­lies of food, spike the crime rate and shock an al­ready del­i­cate econ­o­my by de­stroy­ing the dis­pos­able in­come of 10,000 fam­i­lies.

"This is in­come that would have oth­er­wise been spent in com­mu­ni­ties, and in the blink of an eye these peo­ple's salaries were gone. Shame! Shame!"

She slammed the Gov­ern­ment's "sprin­kling in" of To­ba­go in its state­ments. She said the $32 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to To­ba­go in sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing was on­ly for pay­ing ar­rears of salaries from the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion's 120th re­port, not de­vel­op­ment. Roberts-Radg­man called for ven­dors, who re­cent­ly re­ceived let­ters from the To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion, to be paid.

"When UNC wins, every­body's sup­posed to win. I hope this mat­ter's ad­dressed. I'm im­plor­ing you, if this Gov­ern­ment is say­ing 'when UNC wins, every­body wins', it means the sis­ter isle can­not be left out," Roberts Radg­man added, call­ing on Gov­ern­ment not to use mech­a­nisms like be­ing "for To­ba­go" or "for work­ers" as sound­bites.

Roberts-Radg­man al­so urged the Gov­ern­ment to be cau­tious about the debt it leaves for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

"If his­to­ry is re­al­ly sup­posed to re­peat it­self and this Gov­ern­ment re­al­ly goes back in­to its old ways and em­barks on some sort of reck­less send­ing spree, our chil­dren will car­ry re­pay­ment bur­dens," she said, ex­press­ing con­cern that the pop­u­la­tion was al­ready bur­dened by pay­ing salaries for three Hous­ing Min­is­ters.