Indarsingh: Keith Rowley and Jennifer Baptiste-Primus Cannot be Trusted
Is the Minister of Labour and Enterprise Development Jennifer Baptiste-Primus rejoicing at the prospect that there will be no job losses in the public sector but rather the fall-out will be primarily in the private sector when the country opens back up after the COVID-19 shutdown?
This is what the Member of Parliament for Couva South the Honourable Rudranath Indarsingh is asking following the Minister’s statement to the media that claims of job cuts and retrenchment in the public sector are false.
Almost three months after Prime Minister Keith Rowley’s announcement of a COVID-19 stimulus package extended by Government to small and medium-sized businesses which would assist employers and employees in the private sector, Baptiste-Primus is now admitting that many employers have not received any part of this promised stimulus and that she remains “optimistic” as to whether or not it will have any effect.
And once again, the Minister and her Ministry continues to be reactive rather than proactive in their preparations of policy and guidelines ahead of businesses opening their doors once again after the shut down and employees returning to work.
It is evidently clear that no member of the Keith Rowley-led PNM Administration, including Labour Minister Jennifer Baptiste-Primus, cannot be trusted in any matter in relation to when the Government speaks.
This Minister is speaking of no more job losses post COVID-19 shutdown, but before that, through her Government’s failed economic policies and gross mismanagement of the country, over 65,000 workers had lost their jobs.
Indarsingh referred to Baptiste-Primus’s announcement in early March at a very high public relations event about a new classification of paid leave – Pandemic Leave, a special type of leave devised by the Ministry of Labour and Small Enterprise Development which would be made available through the National Insurance Board. Nearly three months has passed since that announcement and Indarsingh said he is incensed that this appears to be another hoax being perpetuated on unsuspecting workers by the Rowley-led PNM Govt and a deliberate attempt to scoring cheap political points being amplified by the Labour Minister.
Indarsingh, a former President of one of the country’s largest Trade Union, said that for the past 57 months, this Minister of Labour has been an absolute dismal failure. He reiterated that the records would show, even before this Administration is voted out of office in the upcoming general election, that Baptiste-Primus failed in every single aspect of her Ministerial responsibilities.
Her legacy as a Government Minister will be her own resolute failures in implementing a Ten Point Plan which she promised, her failure to bring to the Parliament an amendment to the Retrenchment and Severance Benefits Act 32 of 1985, the Industrial Relations Act and other pieces of Labour legislation which she pledged to do after Arcelor Mittal and Centrin closed their plants. But this list continues including the National Employment Registry, the promise of 35,000 jobs to retrenched T&T workers to drive long haulage trucks in Canada and dual citizenship, the collapse of social dialogue with the National Tripartite Advisory Committee (NTAC) under her watch and the failure to deliver on any of the tenets of the Memorandum of Understanding which was signed with the Labour Movement prior to the General Elections of 2015.
The Couva South MP said the track record of this Administration has been a relentless warfare against honest, law-abiding and hard-working citizens and a policy of doing everything to destroy the very hard-earned gains and benefits that workers had fought for and secured over the years… this is why he is extremely concerned that this Minister may very well be presiding over the impending job losses at the Customs and Excise and Board of Inland Revenue when the Rowley Administration brings its dreaded Revenue Authority
“Baptiste-Primus’s past actions and decisions does not give me any comfort on how this will be handled and managed,” Indarsingh concluded.