The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union, which rep­re­sents the ma­jor­i­ty of work­ers at Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, has called on the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment to pub­licly apol­o­gise to the Caribbean.

This fol­lows the in­abil­i­ty of the ho­tel to ob­tain a li­cence from the US gov­ern­ment to host the Cari­com-Cu­ba sum­mit at the St Ann's ho­tel. In a re­lease, the union de­scribed this as an open em­bar­rass­ment and de­mand­ed that the US gov­ern­ment stopped what they called an "im­pe­ri­al­ist pol­i­cy" which placed hard­ships on the peo­ple of Cu­ba and, by ex­ten­sion, the wider Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty.

"This move by the USA sends chill­ing sig­nals that we in T&T and the Caribbean are con­sid­ered as a State of the Union of the USA and by large sug­gests that we are not in con­trol of our own eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal des­tiny," the re­lease stat­ed.

The state­ment al­so called on the del­e­gates of the Cari­com-Cu­ba Sum­mit to is­sue a state­ment de­nounc­ing the "in­hu­mane and un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic" pol­i­cy im­posed on in­de­pen­dent na­tions in the con­duct of le­git­i­mate in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al mat­ters. It al­so called on the T&T Gov­ern­ment to de­nounce the "in­tru­sion in T&T's sov­er­eign af­fairs" and de­mand­ed that it took full con­trol of the coun­try's re­sources.

The re­lease ques­tioned the ho­tel's de­ci­sion: "How can the USA de­ter­mine who should stay at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre which is owned by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, but man­aged by the Amer­i­can-based Hilton World­wide? "How can the USA gov­ern­ment de­ter­mine that Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre can­not be used by the lead­ers of Cari­com to trans­act Cari­com busi­ness through the deep­en­ing of ties with the Re­pub­lic of Cu­ba and its Pres­i­dent, Raul Cas­tro?" it added. The re­lease con­demned the de­ci­sion, stat­ing that it im­pact­ed in a fun­da­men­tal way on the eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty of the ho­tel and, by ex­ten­sion, its em­ploy­ees.