KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Sep­tem­ber 1 is Free­dom Day.

With the gov­ern­ment's three-month State of Emer­gency (SoE) near­ing its end, the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions (FI­TUN) and the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) is gear­ing up to hit the streets of Port-of-Spain.

At a joint me­dia con­fer­ence to­day, JTUM leader An­cel Ro­get an­nounced the date when union­ists and oth­ers would demon­strate their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with gov­er­nance un­der the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

Ro­get said the trade union move­ment iden­ti­fied that long be­fore COVID-19 ar­rived in T&T, the econ­o­my was in deep cri­sis, and the gov­ern­ment adopt­ed an an­ti-work­er ap­proach.  He said the gov­ern­ment al­so launched a vi­cious at­tack to dec­i­mate the trade union move­ment so it could im­ple­ment aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures and pri­va­tise State en­ti­ties.

Now with COVID-19 here, Ro­get said the gov­ern­ment is us­ing the SoE and pub­lic health re­stric­tions “to car­ry out its ne­far­i­ous plans as peo­ple can­not re­act ef­fec­tive­ly by hit­ting the streets”.

How­ev­er, he said the SoE must end, and like cit­i­zens and work­ers in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, the Unit­ed King­dom and parts of Eu­rope, the trade union move­ment will re­turn to the streets to demon­strate their will to en­sure bet­ter for this coun­try.

Ro­get said they would abide by all the pub­lic health pro­to­cols in car­ry­ing out their demon­stra­tion.