Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

An hour be­fore Gov­ern­ment's lim­it­ed state of emer­gency kicked in, pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union An­cel Ro­get ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of at­tempt­ing to un­der­mine the labour move­ment by en­forc­ing a lim­it­ed cur­few in hot spot crime ar­eas. Speak­ing at his of­fice at Para­mount Build­ing, San Fer­nan­do, on Sun­day night, Ro­get said he knew days be­fore the Gov­ern­ment was plot­ting to call a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency with­out car­ing that such a move would un­der­mine in­vestor con­fi­dence in T&T. Say­ing the Gov­ern­ment was "two-tongue and con­tra­dic­to­ry," Ro­get point­ed out it was just a few weeks ago that Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy made pub­lic state­ments that his Gov­ern­ment had a prop­er han­dle on crime, based on a sta­tis­ti­cal de­crease in mur­ders and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

"Now they are call­ing a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency, based on high crime, and we have to first ques­tion why. We do not trust them. "This Gov­ern­ment is a bit shady and we do not be­lieve this lim­it­ed state of emer­gency has any­thing to do with crime. They are try­ing to sup­press the labour move­ment." Ro­get said.

Say­ing he did not be­lieve there was any crim­i­nal plot to un­der­mine the Gov­ern­ment de­spite re­ports that two Op­po­si­tion MPs were is­sued death threats last Fri­day, Ro­get added: "We have been hear­ing of this state of emer­gency for quite a while, so we are def­i­nite­ly not sur­prised. "It is about iron fist rule, mar­shall law rule and they will have their way at any cost but time longer than twine." Ro­get al­so said Gov­ern­ment was afraid of the reper­cus­sions of a na­tion­al shut­down.

He said de­spite the en­force­ment of a cur­few, the labour move­ment would con­tin­ue to mo­bilise the na­tion­al pub­lic. He added: "We will con­tin­ue our cam­paign, state of emer­gency or not. I am not fear­ful for this state of emer­gency or of be­ing ar­rest­ed."It is part of my job de­scrip­tion. This state of emer­gency came a cou­ple days late, based on our cal­cu­la­tions. We know every step they will be tak­ing. "They are not able to gov­ern prop­er­ly. It's one year, three months af­ter tak­ing of­fice and they have squan­dered the op­por­tu­ni­ty to take the coun­try for­ward. They want to use the court to sup­press us and now this." Ro­get said his union planned to con­tin­ue its mo­bil­i­sa­tion on the ground in some of the ar­eas which the Gov­ern­ment deemed as hot spots, in­clud­ing Ari­ma and Point Lisas.

He said next Tues­day, a mo­bil­i­sa­tion meet­ing would be held in Point Lisas. Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence on Sun­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­nied that the de­ci­sion for a lim­it­ed state of emer­gency was a plot to sup­press the labour move­ment. She said: "This is a crime-fight­ing mea­sure. It is noth­ing else, but a crime-fight­ing mea­sure. The ar­eas iden­ti­fied by pro­tec­tive ser­vices will not af­fect peo­ple gath­er­ing or unions if they want to take le­gal in­dus­tri­al ac­tion. It will not stop them from so do­ing."