KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has de­nied any Gov­ern­ment in­ter­fer­ence in the can­cel­la­tion of a Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) protest out­side TSTT House yes­ter­day, in­stead ac­cus­ing CWU Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer of en­gag­ing in base­less spec­u­la­tion over the de­ci­sion.

Padarath’s re­sponse came af­ter Ogeer ques­tioned whether some­one had in­ter­vened to have po­lice with­draw per­mis­sion for the demon­stra­tion and sug­gest­ed the move was in­tend­ed to in­tim­i­date her and frus­trate the union’s planned ac­tion.

Re­spond­ing to the me­dia af­ter the protest’s ap­proval was re­scind­ed, Ogeer said, “Maybe some­one who needs to tough­en up called and in­formed the TTPS to give me a good wood to ‘bul­ly me’. Maybe they be­lieve that they should sti­fle, fur­ther sup­press and make work­ers feel frus­trat­ed af­ter stat­ing that we will open­ly protest for what is just­ly ours.”

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia reached out to Padarath on the claims yes­ter­day, he re­ject­ed any sug­ges­tion of Gov­ern­ment in­volve­ment.

Padarath said the Gov­ern­ment was not afraid of protests and ac­cept­ed the right of cit­i­zens and trade unions to demon­strate, pro­vid­ed they did so with­in the law.

Padarath said, “Ms Ogeer must stop chas­ing shad­ows and ghosts where none ex­ists. Sim­ply, all she has to do, if it was in fact re­scind­ed, was to reach out to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Of­fice and ask for what rea­sons. I am not afraid of protests, and there­fore it is the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right of cit­i­zens to do so, but they must do so with­in the con­fines of the law. And there­fore my sug­ges­tion to her will be to reach out. But def­i­nite­ly from the side of the Gov­ern­ment, no one is at­tempt­ing to in­ter­fere in any protest. We have no fear of any protest.”

Padarath al­so ac­cused Ogeer of cre­at­ing the im­pres­sion that there was a “sin­is­ter mo­tive” be­hind the with­draw­al of per­mis­sion with­out first seek­ing an ex­pla­na­tion from the po­lice.

The CWU had planned to lead hun­dreds of work­ers in a protest out­side TSTT House in Port-of-Spain be­gin­ning at noon yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to Ogeer, the planned protest was called off af­ter po­lice with­drew per­mis­sion for the demon­stra­tion just hours be­fore it was due to be­gin.

Ogeer said the ap­proval was re­versed around 6 am yes­ter­day when she re­ceived a call from Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion in­form­ing her that per­mis­sion had been re­scind­ed.

Re­spond­ing to the me­dia over the ap­proval re­ver­sal via What­sApp yes­ter­day, she said, “A yes quick­ly turned in­to no.”

She said the union had been giv­en per­mis­sion on Thurs­day and had been ad­vised that the protest could pro­ceed pro­vid­ed it re­mained peace­ful.

Ogeer said po­lice sub­se­quent­ly in­di­cat­ed that the 500-me­tre re­stric­tion on pub­lic protests con­tained in the State of Emer­gency (SoE) reg­u­la­tions had not ini­tial­ly been tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion.

Un­der the reg­u­la­tions, pub­lic protests and demon­stra­tions are pro­hib­it­ed with­in 500 me­tres of sev­er­al des­ig­nat­ed lo­ca­tions, in­clud­ing the Min­istry of Fi­nance at the Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex on In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain.

The min­istry is lo­cat­ed about a street away from TSTT House, where the CWU had in­tend­ed to demon­strate.

The planned protest comes amid an on­go­ing wage dis­pute be­tween the CWU and TSTT over whether an agree­ment had been reached on a pro­posed ten per cent wage in­crease for work­ers.

Ogeer has been dou­bling down that the union and TSTT en­gaged in dis­cus­sions on a ten per cent in­crease over two three-year bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods, cov­er­ing six years, and that cal­cu­la­tions were joint­ly un­der­tak­en to de­ter­mine the cost of the pro­pos­al.

The union has al­so sought to con­sol­i­date cost-of-liv­ing al­lowance (CO­LA) in­to the set­tle­ment.

How­ev­er, Padarath re­cent­ly re­ject­ed Ogeer’s claim of the ten per cent agree­ment, say­ing in­stead that both TSTT’s man­age­ment and board ad­vised him that no such of­fer had been made.

De­spite the can­cel­la­tion of yes­ter­day’s protest, Ogeer in­di­cat­ed that the union in­tend­ed to con­tin­ue its cam­paign.

She said, “The road long, but we have en­durance.”

She al­so hint­ed at the union’s next course of ac­tion.

“We will be go­ing ve­hi­cle shop­ping next, then we need in­sur­ance for our ve­hi­cles.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that a spouse of one of TSTT’s board mem­bers is a car sales­per­son, and the ex­ec­u­tive is al­so in the in­sur­ance in­dus­try.