President of the Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM) Ancel Roget, who is predicting a one-third cut in the workforce of State-owned Petrotrin, has told workers not to stay in a “comatose” state but to band together to stop Government from implementing regressive policies.
Speaking at a Conference of Shop Stewards and Branch Officers (Cossabo) at the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union headquarters in San Fernando, Roget said while Government continues to mismanage T&T’s resources, the workforce was being forced to bear extreme hardship. He said workers throughout the country are facing unemployment.
“Government’s policy is to bring revenue in line with expenditure and the net effect of that is workers will pay the price. They have sent home people to bring the books in line. They saying we don’t want to go to IMF because IMF will impose conditional deals that Trinidad and Tobago will find hard to bear but they are preparing the country for a flurry of IMF intervention,” Roget said.
He said Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley is disrespecting the trade union movement and the working class. After the budget Roget said a letter was sent to Rowley in October calling for changes to Government’s policy. He said Rowley never even had the courtesy to send an acknowledgment of the letter.
“When you raise the cost of fuel and increase taxation on the purchase of hybrid vehicles you bring hardship on people. This is not a people’s budget,” he said.
Roget said people must be prepared to defend the working class and stop Government from imposing further hardship.