NATUC responds to State of Emergency declaration

The Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NATUC) has re­spond­ed to the de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Pub­lic Emer­gency by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar fol­low­ing an es­ca­la­tion in vi­o­lent crime.

NATUC con­demned crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty and stat­ed its sup­port for law­ful and con­sti­tu­tion­al mea­sures to safe­guard cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion stat­ed that emer­gency pow­ers must be tem­po­rary, pro­por­tion­ate and sub­ject to de­mo­c­ra­t­ic over­sight. It said the con­sti­tu­tion­al, in­dus­tri­al and hu­man rights of work­ers must not be af­fect­ed.

NATUC said col­lec­tive agree­ments, griev­ance pro­ce­dures, due process and pro­tec­tion against ar­bi­trary de­ten­tion, dis­missal or vic­tim­i­sa­tion must re­main in place.

The trade union body al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure that se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel, es­sen­tial ser­vice work­ers and front­line pub­lic of­fi­cers re­ceive re­sources, lo­gis­ti­cal sup­port and com­pen­sa­tion in keep­ing with their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties dur­ing the pe­ri­od of emer­gency.

NATUC stat­ed that while en­force­ment is re­quired, crime is al­so a so­cial and eco­nom­ic is­sue. It called for in­vest­ment in youth de­vel­op­ment, job cre­ation, ed­u­ca­tion, com­mu­ni­ty pro­grammes and so­cial ser­vices to ad­dress un­der­ly­ing caus­es.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said it is pre­pared to en­gage in di­a­logue with the Gov­ern­ment, em­ploy­ers and civ­il so­ci­ety to en­sure that se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures are im­ple­ment­ed re­spon­si­bly and that pub­lic safe­ty and civ­il lib­er­ties are main­tained.