War of words between Young and Roget

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

For­mer prime min­is­ter and for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has fired back at Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get, ac­cus­ing him of in­grat­i­tude and mis­lead­ing work­ers.

In a so­cial me­dia video on Sat­ur­day, Young dis­missed Ro­get’s crit­i­cism with what he de­scribed as “great, great amuse­ment,” be­fore tak­ing di­rect aim at the vet­er­an trade union­ist.

“I want to ask him… when he told BP, ‘Take your rig and go!’ How many work­ers lost out on op­por­tu­ni­ties? How many years it took us to get back the rig build­ing work for Trinidad and To­ba­go?” Young said.

He went fur­ther, warn­ing cit­i­zens not to fol­low Ro­get. “Don’t fol­low him, you know, be­cause he’s done noth­ing, noth­ing for the move­ment… how many more peo­ple are you go­ing to lead astray?”

Young ref­er­enced a past Petrotrin dis­pute, adding: “In 2014, when Aun­tie Kam­la want­ed to fire you… who was your lawyer, and who saved you? In­grat­i­tude is worse than witch­craft.”

Young’s com­ments came one day af­ter Ro­get is­sued a warn­ing dur­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Work­ers' Day cel­e­bra­tions in San Fer­nan­do, telling Young and the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment to stay out of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment’s af­fairs.

“Leave the Gov­ern­ment alone to con­duct the busi­ness in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Do not un­der­mine this Gov­ern­ment,” Ro­get said.