PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Jul 5, CMC –
Thousands of people took to the streets on Friday in protest against the
coalition People’s Partnership government of Prime Minister Kamla
Persad Bissessar calling for early general elections and accusing her
administration of selling out the labour agenda.
With
heavy police security, the marchers, carrying placards in support of
their calls for an early poll, chanted that the coalition, which came to
power in the May 2010 general election, had betrayed the trust of the
labour movement.
The
protest had been organised by the Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM) and
according to David Abdulah, the secretary general of the powerful
Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU), the turnout had been more than had
been anticipated given that there were other activities such as the
international cricket match between the West Indies and India at the
Queen’s Park Oval.
Abdulah,
whose Movement for Social Justice (MSJ), quit the coalition government
last year after complaining that it had failed to keep its promise of
implementing the “Workers Agenda”, said that the march was also to
highlight the poor governance in the country.
“It
is a march to deal with all the poor governance issues in the country,
corruption, nepotism, discrimination and the non-implementation of the
workers agenda which we signed which was the mandate given to my party
to take into the People’s Partnership in 2010. Health, labour,
education, all of these form part of the workers agenda,” he added.
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