OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Labour Move­ment has not ruled out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of col­lab­o­rat­ing, once again, with Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ad­dress is­sues af­fect­ing cit­i­zens across the coun­try.

On Mon­day, the move­ment sub­mit­ted a let­ter to Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert at the Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex, Port-of-Spain, out­lin­ing crit­i­cal is­sues af­fect­ing the cit­i­zens of T&T.

But the labour lead­ers al­so de­liv­ered a let­ter to Per­sad-Bisses­sar, mak­ing her aware of what was com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Im­bert.

Speak­ing with the me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter hand-de­liv­er­ing the let­ter to Im­bert, An­cel Ro­get, pres­i­dent of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), said that the let­ter was a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort among the three ma­jor labour move­ments: JTUM, Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC), and the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Union and NGOs (FI­TUN).

Ro­get ex­plained the pur­pose be­hind writ­ing to the Op­po­si­tion Leader, the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

“We are al­so go­ing to de­liv­er a copy of this let­ter to the Ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the Op­po­si­tion Leader, so she will al­so be ap­prised of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion that we gave to the min­is­ter, call­ing for re­lief for the suf­fer­ing peo­ple of this coun­try,” Ro­get said.

When asked whether this could lead to a part­ner­ship be­tween the labour move­ment and the Op­po­si­tion, sim­i­lar to 2010—when unions joined with the UNC in the gen­er­al elec­tion—Ro­get said it has not been ruled out.

“Well, there are all kinds of pos­si­bil­i­ties, but at this point in time, we are very fo­cused on the is­sues that af­fect the peo­ple in this coun­try. There’s all kinds of pos­si­bil­i­ties, and we are say­ing that the suf­fer­ing of the peo­ple must be ad­dressed, and there­fore we are out front point­ing to those and call­ing for what we con­sid­er to be rea­son­able so­lu­tions that would bring re­lief to an al­ready over­bur­dened pop­u­la­tion,” Ro­get said.

How­ev­er, Pres­i­dent of NATUC Michael An­nisette quick­ly point­ed out that the labour move­ment will be fo­cused on work­ing with po­lit­i­cal par­ties that are all about ac­tion and not just words.

“We are not go­ing to sup­port any po­lit­i­cal par­ty willy nil­ly. What we will do, we will sup­port ideas, we will sup­port philoso­phies that are demon­strat­ed by those po­lit­i­cal par­ties that speak to the poor, the sin­gle par­ent, the work­ing class, the pen­sion­ers, the dis­ad­van­taged. “Be­cause we can­not de­ny, we can­not de­ny that the coun­try is un­der a col­lapse, crime is run­ning away,” An­nisette said.

Mean­while, Ro­get al­so claimed that the Gov­ern­ment plans to is­sue let­ters to cit­i­zens re­gard­ing prop­er­ty tax soon.

Ro­get said the in­for­ma­tion was de­liv­ered to the union’s mail­box.

“One let­ter has been dropped in our mail­box and we have in­for­ma­tion that the Gov­ern­ment, un­der the di­rec­tion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, is about to send out cor­re­spon­dence to cit­i­zens in this coun­try by reg­is­tered mail with re­spect to the in­crease in prop­er­ty tax. They’re com­ing af­ter the pop­u­la­tion with this prop­er­ty tax,” he warned.

Ro­get al­so called on Im­bert and the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress sev­er­al key is­sues, in­clud­ing the min­i­mum wage, fu­el tax at the pumps, and re­duc­ing gaso­line prices to ease the bur­den on cit­i­zens.

Re­gard­ing fu­el prices, Ro­get said he was trou­bled by, what he called, the in­con­sis­ten­cy in price changes.

“Prices go up and nev­er come down, in­clud­ing fu­el prices. When you in­crease the price of fu­el, it has a knock-on ef­fect where the price of goods and ser­vices al­so go up and there­fore, if you re­duce the price of fu­el at the pumps, you, in fact, will be al­low­ing for a lit­tle more breath­ing space, for not just the mo­tor­ing pub­lic, but those who trav­el and those who are im­pact­ed by the in­fla­tion­ary costs,” he added.