Brent Zephyrine

Pres­i­dent of the Point Fortin South West­ern Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Nigel Mi­nors says the eco­nom­ic growth of the T&T can be se­vere­ly com­pro­mised if the state of emer­gency ex­tends be­yond 15 days. "We are hop­ing that the cur­few lasts no longer than the 15 days be­cause we see the en­tire ex­er­cise as some­thing that must be done force­ful­ly and swift­ly enough for the re­quired re­sults," he said in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian. Mi­nors added: "I tend to see it (a state of emer­gency) as some­thing that should be a sur­gi­cal strike-very clean, tar­get­ed and with­in 15 days time be­cause when you past that, then the ques­tion is, when will you stop?

"And I think it's go­ing to put too much of a down­ward pres­sure on busi­ness and over­all eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try, the longer you main­tain that state of emer­gency." He said too that while the Cham­ber sup­port­ed and was ful­ly "cog­nisant of the rea­son­ing put for­ward by the gov­ern­ment" for the im­po­si­tion of this na­tion­al state of emer­gency, it hoped for "a res­o­lu­tion" in the ear­li­est pos­si­ble time. He said while it was "pret­ty much, busi­ness as usu­al" in Point Fortin by virtue of the area not be­ing iden­ti­fied as a "hot spot," there were "a few places that would close about an hour ear­li­er" be­cause of the mil­i­tary lock­down. "Po­lice pa­trols have stepped up in the area and I think peo­ple are un­der­stand­ing that al­though there is no cur­few (in Point Fortin), that does not mean that you would not be stopped and searched, so it has tak­en a lit­tle toll," Mi­nors said.

Asked what were some of the ma­jor con­cerns of the Cham­ber in re­gard to the cur­rent state of emer­gency, the Cham­ber pres­i­dent said com­muters had ex­pressed some de­gree of ap­pre­hen­sion and there was al­so con­cern about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of crim­i­nal pen­e­tra­tion in the south west­ern bor­ough. "One of the key is­sues that I've heard be­ing raised is how late can you leave Point Fortin to get to Port-of-Spain and sim­i­lar­ly, how ear­ly can you get out of the na­tion's cap­i­tal in or­der to get home in time. "Even more im­por­tant­ly, a ma­jor con­cern is the per­ceived threat of the mi­gra­tion of the neg­a­tive el­e­ments from some of the hot spots in­to ar­eas like Point Fortin and La Brea where they may feel they have a lit­tle more space to run around."

Mi­nors said, though the Cham­ber was not in a po­si­tion to com­ment on the ne­ces­si­ty of a state of emer­gency at this time, he agreed that "some of the ar­eas cov­ered" by the De­fence Force, "can on­ly be done un­der such cir­cum­stances" and he hoped that there would be "no abuse of the State's au­thor­i­ty" in the ex­er­cise of their du­ties.

Unions ca­pa­ble of mak­ing a dent

Asked if he felt the trade unions were ca­pa­ble of mo­bil­is­ing enough sup­port to con­sti­tute a na­tion­al strike as pro­claimed by the re­spec­tive in­dus­tri­al lead­ers, Mi­nors said it was in­deed pos­si­ble. "It may not be as huge as it might have been a year or two ago, but the turnout could be sig­nif­i­cant enough to make peo­ple sit up and watch, es­pe­cial­ly based on the cur­rent eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion and the con­cern of the peo­ple," he said. Mi­nors said if the trade unions were to have a strike of such mag­ni­tude (na­tion­al lev­el) "there would be a neg­a­tive im­pact on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in the area" and he hoped that the par­ties "fol­low process (ne­go­ti­a­tions) and find some way to pre­vent it."

He said the con­flict be­tween the gov­ern­ment and the trade union body could be avert­ed from what ap­pears to be a "realm of mis­un­der­stand­ing and mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion. "If the unions see this five per cent wage cap as some­thing they can move for­ward with since the gov­ern­ment has in­di­cat­ed that there is no such re­stric­tion, then that might be a good start. "I think when the state­ment was made for them (unions) to start from ze­ro per cent, that had caused some neg­a­tive fall­out," the Cham­ber pres­i­dent added. Mi­nors em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of the gov­ern­ment al­low­ing the man­age­ment of the var­i­ous ne­go­ti­at­ing bod­ies "some lee­way" and not prej­u­dice the process.

He said: "It's like telling some­one, you can­not cross a cer­tain bound­ary, so let's talk about oth­er things, when that bound­ary is at the cen­tre of the dis­cus­sions." On that note, Mi­nors added that while "it was doubt­ful" as to whether the gov­ern­ment could af­ford a wage in­crease in ex­cess of five per cent, giv­en "the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion," he did not "want to pro­nounce on some­thing that del­i­cate with­out hav­ing seen the books" him­self.

Road­works com­mend­ed

Mi­nors com­mend­ed the ef­forts and com­mit­ment of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er for the very time­ly road­works that have com­menced in Point Fortin and its en­vi­rons re­cent­ly (South Oropouche and La Brea), amid protest ac­tion which re­cent­ly plagued the area. He said the com­mu­ni­ty was "tol­er­ant of what­ev­er dis­rup­tions" they had to ex­pe­ri­ence in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate such road­works ac­knowl­edg­ing that there were great "ben­e­fits" to be de­rived from such a ven­ture. "Point Fortin is a ma­jor cog in the whole en­er­gy en­gine in T&T and to imag­ine any busi­ness per­son or work­er want­i­ng to use that road­way (pri­or to the road­works) for any­thing, was in­deed, a ter­ri­ble thought," Mi­nors added.