The streets of Port-of-Spain were flood­ed with dis­grun­tled pub­lic ser­vants yes­ter­day, as the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) led a march against what it deemed as the “un­fair treat­ment of dai­ly and month­ly paid work­ers”.

The union and work­ers protest­ed against the four per cent wage in­crease of­fered by the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO).

Hun­dreds of work­ers marched from the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade to Hen­ry Street, Ox­ford Street, St Vin­cent Street and Fred­er­ick Street, then back to the prom­e­nade, all un­der the watch­ful eyes of the po­lice.

While mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices and teach­ers have ac­cept­ed the four per cent of­fer and will be­gin re­ceiv­ing their promised back­pay by De­cem­ber, thou­sands of oth­er pub­lic ser­vants yes­ter­day said they were frus­trat­ed that they are not get­ting the salaries they be­lieve they de­serve.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the protest, NATUC gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette said he knew the Gov­ern­ment had the mon­ey to give work­ers an in­crease above four per cent.

An­nisette said, “It is clear in the unions minds that there is a de­lib­er­ate pol­i­cy of this Gov­ern­ment to sub­ju­gate wages, to have wages that will al­ways make us beg­gars and hav­ing to go back to the Gov­ern­ment with our hands in our mouths beg­ging for the crumbs and we are say­ing that is un­fair.

“We are say­ing that the Gov­ern­ment can find the mon­ey to pay more than four per cent. They can pay liv­ing wages that could af­ford peo­ple to sur­vive in this coun­try.”

Join­ing NATUC were work­ers from the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (MTS), Trinidad and To­ba­go Port Au­thor­i­ty and Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB), who protest­ed for in­creased wages that were al­ready signed off on.

But they al­so said their wages are on­ly one part of the prob­lem.

An­nisette said yes­ter­day’s march was al­so about so­cial jus­tice, liv­ing wages and crime in the coun­try.

Protest­ing work­ers said they will not be forced in­to sign­ing off on an in­crease they re­gard as high­ly dis­re­spect­ful.

Asked what the next plan of ac­tion would be, An­nisette said work­ers are fed- up with march­ing.

He hint­ed that work­ers may not show up for work at all in a bid to get the mes­sage across.