KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

From lob­by­ing for work­ers’ rights to lob­by­ing with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), the Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) has of­fi­cial­ly un­veiled its con­tri­bu­tion to the coali­tion of in­ter­ests, by yes­ter­day sub­mit­ting two of its mem­bers for screen­ing un­der the UNC ban­ner.

For­mer sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU) Clyder El­der was screened for the La Brea con­stituen­cy and for­mer Trin­mar branch pres­i­dent, now vice pres­i­dent of OW­TU, Ernesto Ke­sar, was screened for Point Fortin.

OW­TU rep­re­sen­ta­tives told Guardian Me­dia that they were both the sole nom­i­nees to be screened for those con­stituen­cies. Af­ter the process was com­plet­ed last evening, El­der said both he and Ke­sar were con­fi­dent they would be se­lect­ed as can­di­dates for the seats.

Ear­li­er, a proud OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get said af­ter be­ing in talks with the UNC for al­most two years, it was agreed that it was not good enough just to stand aside and give sup­port to the par­ty but rather ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pate to get a bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ro­get said, “The trade union move­ment, we rep­re­sent an in­ter­est, the work­ers’ in­ter­est, and that in­ter­est has been at­tacked fe­ro­cious­ly by Stu­art Young, Dr (Kei­th) Row­ley and the PNM over the last nine years and there­fore the on­ly way we can prop­er­ly rep­re­sent that in­ter­est is to put a voice in the Par­lia­ment. There­fore, we have been giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty and have em­braced that op­por­tu­ni­ty with both hands. We have a com­mon­al­i­ty in terms of in­ter­est, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar iden­ti­fies with work­ers’ in­ter­est.”

El­der said while he may gain many en­e­mies for be­ing on a UNC tick­et, the re­trenched TSTT work­er—who af­ter a court or­der is sup­posed to be re­in­stat­ed—said he be­lieves the par­ty is best qual­i­fied to gov­ern T&T.

Speak­ing to me­dia out­side the UNC head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas be­fore screen­ing, El­der said, “Is UNC a per­fect par­ty? By no means it is, but is the UNC the best par­ty to take this coun­try in­to gov­ern­ment and in­to progress? Yes, it is. And I make no apolo­gies to any­one for be­ing on a UNC tick­et to fight for La Brea.

“For all of the wealth and re­sources that La Brea has, a pitch lake, so much oil, and what do the peo­ple of La Brea have to show for those re­sources? Not one damn thing from this PNM gov­ern­ment. I don’t care who the leader is, it could be Stu­art Young, it could be Kei­th Row­ley, it is the same PNM agen­da.”

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, Ke­sar, who was fired from Petrotrin due to a se­ries of es­ca­lat­ed dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tions, said he has lived in Point Fortin his en­tire life and knows ex­act­ly how to win the seat for the UNC.

Ke­sar said, “We know where we need to fo­cus on if we have to take this seat. Point Fortin UNC cam­paign 2025 knows ex­act­ly what we have to do to take this seat away from PNM.”

Giv­ing her full back­ing, UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that join­ing forces with the unions will help im­prove the qual­i­ty of life for cit­i­zens.

“They’ve (PNM) treat­ed work­ers in this coun­try worse than slaves over these years and look at where we are to­day, the coun­try is in to­tal chaos.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so con­demned Gov­ern­ment for al­leged­ly short­list­ing a new com­pa­ny to pur­chase the Petrotrin re­fin­ery be­fore a gen­er­al elec­tion.

“We are be­ing ad­vised, of course not of­fi­cial­ly, that the Gov­ern­ment has held Cab­i­net meet­ings about a com­pa­ny that they want to give the re­fin­ery to. Now, they have done this be­fore every sin­gle elec­tion. They promise it and it nev­er hap­pens so it’s al­ways like a car­rot on a stick that they are hold­ing out there... We have se­ri­ous con­cerns about the com­pa­ny that they iden­ti­fied. There have been se­ri­ous le­gal is­sues with re­spect to trans­paren­cy and oth­er kinds of is­sues with the com­pa­ny,” she claimed.