HELL TO PAY

The threat was made by OWTU president general Ancel Roget during a protest yesterday which followed a 45-minute long meeting with Minister of Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan. Roget minced no words in his threat to the People’s National Movement (PNM) government.

“Make sure you pay every single worker all monies owed to each and everyone. All hell will break loose if we don’t get this thing dealt with in the way it’s supposed to be dealt with!” He was joined in the protest by more than 200 ex-workers of the highway project.

Over 800 workers were retrenched when OAS Construtora closed up shop, before the highway project could be completed, after parent company Grupos OAS of Brazil, filed for bankruptcy in 2015.

The OWTU’s demand that the retrenched OAS workers be paid outstanding wages and severance money comes after government stated that the National Infrastructure Development Company (NIDCO) has recovered $670 million in letters of credit and bonds from a number of banks that provided guarantees for OAS. A further $250M, Finance Minister Colm Imbert said earlier this year, is being actively pursued by NIDCO lawyers in British courts.

The protest took place outside the ministry officer at the corner of Richmond and London streets in Port-of-Spain. Roget said that Minister Sinanan agreed that workers ought to be paid and disagreed with how the matter was handled. “I was told that he is currently working on a plan to bring closure to this issue and we pressed the minister to give it some urgency as some workers have been waiting for salaries for as long as four years,” Roget said.

He noted that Minister Sinanan informed the union that the performance bond held by NIDCO has not been “totally cleared” because there is some legal challenge from OAS.

The union leader added that Minister Sinanan indicated that he wants to restart the highway construction in February and government is working feverishly to put things in place to resume construction. “He agreed with us that you cannot restart something that was not properly dealt with when it stopped. We support the restart of the highway, we want that highway completed. If there was not so much corruption it would have been completed in the first place,” Roget said.

He stated that over $23 million is owed to 880 retrenched workers and the bond is worth more than a $1 billion. “These are seasonal workers, you don’t have a highway being constructed every week or every year or every decade and therefore when construction of such a major project is undertaken, the workers who come out and perform for that specific period, will be working short term. So it is important that they be paid their outstanding salaries and severance benefits because the cost of living keeps going up.” “We are preparing that JTUM (the Joint Trade Union Movement) and OWTU will give full support to everything that is good to ensure that this country benefits, but at the same time.” As workers cheered, Roget continued. “We are also preparing that if this Government does not take heed and walk the path of justice, fairness, equity and decency, void of corruption...we are preparing to shake the blasted place down,” he thundered.