Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

With al­most 20,000 con­trac­tors and work­ers now on the bread­line, Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi say their fir­ings are “wicked­ness,” “vin­dic­tive­ness” and “po­lit­i­cal pet­ti­ness” on the part of the Gov­ern­ment.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, the men chas­tised the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate work­ers at var­i­ous state en­ti­ties over the past cou­ple weeks.

Their com­ments came af­ter con­trac­tors and work­ers at­tached to the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment’s Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme were ter­mi­nat­ed yes­ter­day.

Al-Rawi claimed that Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of T&T (RDC) CEO Ja­son Kissoon, on the in­struc­tion of Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, ter­mi­nat­ed over 100 con­trac­tors and thou­sands of em­ploy­ees, to­talling 4,608 peo­ple over­all, from the pro­gramme, which falls un­der the aegis of the RDC.

A doc­u­ment al­so sur­faced on­line yes­ter­day show­ing one of the ter­mi­na­tion let­ters sent out by Kissoon.

“What is hap­pen­ing right now in Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der this Gov­ern­ment is un­prece­dent­ed. Nev­er in the his­to­ry of gov­ern­ment tran­si­tion, po­lit­i­cal tran­si­tion, that we’ve ever had a move­ment that came out of re­venge, spite, and vin­dic­tive­ness,” Al-Rawi said.

“I’m not say­ing that be­cause it sounds good. I’m say­ing it be­cause when you lis­ten to the Gov­ern­ment’s key spokesper­son on this par­tic­u­lar is­sue, es­pe­cial­ly (Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter) Bar­ry the Butch­er (Padarath) and col­lat­er­al dam­age Clyde (El­der), it speaks to the lev­el of wicked­ness that is tak­ing place. That is un­prece­dent­ed in the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Al-Rawi said there are now close to 20,000 work­ers on the bread­line be­cause of Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions, with no talk of so­cial sup­port for work­ers who are the most vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety, some earn­ing a mere $1,400 a fort­night.

“In less than two months of yel­low is the curse, in less than two months of the UNC’s Gov­ern­ment, you now have 19,810 peo­ple un­em­ployed, fired, not re­newed,” Al-Rawi said, adding that the Op­po­si­tion will mount a le­gal chal­lenge on be­half of all the dis­missed work­ers, as the ter­mi­na­tions “wreaks of le­gal in­jus­tice.”

Al-Rawi said se­nior coun­sels Lar­ry Lal­la and Kei­th Scot­land, along with him­self, Gon­za­les, Ka­reem Mar­celle, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pene­lope Beck­les and oth­ers, will be tak­ing the mat­ter to court at the ear­li­est con­ve­nience.

Both men ques­tioned the si­lence of union lead­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly for­mer Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union gen­er­al sec­re­tary Clyde El­der, now a mem­ber of par­lia­ment and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

The men took ex­tra aim at El­der for his com­ment that the fir­ing of over 10,000 Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) last Fri­day was “col­lat­er­al dam­age” as the Gov­ern­ment seeks to re­form CEPEP.

Fired CEPEP work­ers protest­ed at the com­pa­ny’s head­quar­ters in St Madeleine yes­ter­day, call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to pay them the salaries they were promised for Ju­ly and to re­hire them as soon as pos­si­ble.

Al-Rawi added: “What is par­tic­u­lar­ly harsh and op­pres­sive, what is in­deed wrong, what reeks of in­jus­tice is that these ter­mi­na­tions and non-re­newals come about af­ter min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment, let me name them, Bar­ry Padarath, Sad­dam Ho­sein, much to a less­er ex­tent, but nonethe­less in­volved. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance him­self and oth­ers have come for­ward to the pop­u­la­tion days af­ter com­ing in­to of­fice, and they made very se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions to say, what is it that Mr Padarath says? The PNM boys and girls, friends and fi­nanciers.”

Al-Rawi said un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment this type of ac­tion was nev­er done, adding that when Petrotrin was re­struc­tured, the then gov­ern­ment met with union lead­ers pri­or to the plan be­ing ac­tioned. He said work­ers were al­so giv­en sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages which in­clud­ed land and op­tions to pur­chase shares in the new com­pa­nies that re­placed Petrotrin.

“We ac­cept that gov­ern­ments have the pre­rog­a­tive to cre­ate pol­i­cy and to re­design things. When you win an elec­tion,you have to run a coun­try. But what we are point­ing out here, I want you to com­pare the po­si­tion in Petrotrin to the po­si­tion to­day.

He added: “When the gov­ern­ment came in via the board of di­rec­tors of Her­itage, what was its pre­de­ces­sor Petrotrin, and said, here is what is go­ing to hap­pen. You are go­ing to re­ceive your sev­er­ance and re­trench­ment. You are go­ing to re­ceive mon­ey. You are go­ing to re­ceive land. You are go­ing to re­ceive this. Peo­ple will be re­hired. Has any of that hap­pened here for 20,000 peo­ple?”

Al-Rawi chas­tised the Gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to meet the needs of the peo­ple who have been fired, say­ing it should not be about who might be po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned.

Gon­za­les said the tim­ing of the dis­missals was con­ve­nient­ly done around the ar­rival of In­dia Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di.

“They are very cal­cu­lat­ed, so it is per­haps a well-co­or­di­nat­ed po­lit­i­cal dis­trac­tion to get the pop­u­la­tion, the cit­i­zens of this coun­try to fo­cus on this high-lev­el vis­it as op­posed to what is hap­pen­ing to 19,000 cit­i­zens los­ing their jobs and not know­ing how they’re go­ing to feed their fam­i­lies,” Gon­za­les said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Tan­coo, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Kennedy Swarats­ingh and Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Khadi­jah Ameen on the lat­est dis­missals yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, all at­tempts were un­suc­cess­ful.

PNM’s tab­u­la­tion of work­ers dis­missed un­der UNC to date:

10,700 CEPEP work­ers

4,608 Forestry work­ers

140 change agents in Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­istry,

400 WASA work­ers

700 COVID work­ers

900 RHA work­ers

10 WASA ex­ec­u­tives

Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor

10 work­ers in the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice