Indarsingh: TDC retrenchments will further destabilise country

In an interview with Newsday on Tuesday, Indarsingh said, “It is an additional 114 families that will now be added to the 25,000 workers unemployed since the (Dr Keith) Rowley administration assumed political office.” The Couva South MP said the sending home of the workers came at a particularly critical time when school is going to re-open and parents have to buy books and uniforms for their children. He said government also continues to undermine the principle of good industrial practices, the labour laws of T&T and the Industrial Court. “At a time when the government has called upon labour and citizens to make sacrifices, where are they getting money to hire senior counsels to appeal the Industrial Court rulings?” Indarsingh said “Government has asked labour to return to the table of national tripartite talks, but one wonders how could labour trust a government that is behaving in such a contentious, anti labour manner? Further, they have failed to grow and diversify the economy. No one knows what these two new entities are.

Are these workers going to be reabsorbed?”Labour Minister Jennifer Baptiste-Primus also got a scolding from Indarsingh who said she has been silent since the closure of Arcelor Mittal and Centrin. He said a proposed national employment registry by Baptiste-Primus to deal with retrenched workers