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OWTU SPEAKS 2004-05-07 POLITICIAN AS BOSS The politician as boss continues, unthinkingly, to demonstrate favouritism for one over another thereby providing ground for cries of discrimination and unfair treatment against many. They do it all the time - all of them. Very recent Prime Ministerial blusters seem to contain, implicitly, a disposition by Mr. Manning, to exercising the power and authority of his office to effect due care, diligence and humane consideration in the immediate treatment of squatters whose squalid abodes were demolished in the Boss’ constituency. “Ensure that accommodation is found for my displaced squatting supporters at Union Hall,” the big Sah Help seems to be demanding, or heads will roll at the NHA. One does not ask the NHA for any special consideration nor does the Parliamentary Representative have to instruct the NHA or its Minister what it must do. “I am Monarch of all I survey in San Fernando East and the Cabinet. My right and authority – there must be none to dispute”. It is so disgusting – the impervious rocks that pass for brains sometimes. It really is a case of different strokes for different folks. The other set of misleaders are sure to say that it is a different kind of house padding for a different constituency. But really, the displaced squatters at Wallerfield and Cashew Gardens – indeed, all other squatters in the country must think that the most secured place to squat is in the constituency whose Parliamentary Representative is the Prime Minister – the Boss - El Capitan – Numero Uno. ???XX It is just too overbearing. But really there is much room in San Fernando East to accommodate a few thousand squatters who may claim regularization a few years down the road. And Mr. Manning might well see a personal electoral benefit in that given our myopia even as we talk Vision 2020. Which reminds me: Is the NHA working with the Minister of Planning and Development and the Minister of Agriculture at all in developing a land Use Policy for Trinidad and Tobago? The question is pertinent. We see a number of 10’x10’ cubicles resembling houses going up as part of the NHA Housing thrust – in clusters which will only lead to unsociable communal existence and in areas which could otherwise provide for such buildings and development that would lend to a more aesthetic environment. We seem intent on crowing our immediate urban areas with squatters’ shacks and NHA cells and apartments which in short time will resemble the barrios in our neighbouring Spanish towns. And as we do that we abandon and surrender beautiful rural and Agriculture tracts and large acreages to the few of the foreign and local moneyed class who understand pricing and fully appreciate value. We will revisit this item. Have a good Friday evening and a better weekend. ******************************************************************************************************* OWTU SPEAKS 2004-05-03 "UNION AND WORKERS' IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY" The weekend celebrations in Point Fortin, I am sure, took on a special spirit of riotous festivity spiced especially by President Mandela’s short but successful visit here and invigoratively by our cricketers’ recapture of West Indies winning ways in the two ‘One Dayers’ at Beausejour in St Lucia. King Lara and his Princes of West Indian cricket have restored some of our glory and we must thank and congratulate them. I was not at the Borough Day revelry but I listened to the cricket commentary on Saturday even as I walking the two(2) miles to the Tanteen Playing Field in Grenada in the company of some three thousand (3000) or so workers in celebration of International Workers’ Day – May Day. I was invited by the Grenada Trade Unions Council to deliver the feature Address at their celebrations this year. I addressed the theme, ‘Unions and Workers in a Global Economy’, to an audience of an estimated five thousand (5,000) workers and their families. I suggested in my speech that for us West Indians, globalization is not a new phenomenon. That in fact, the modern Caribbean was called into being as a result of globalization. That with our production and export of sugar and importation of labour (first slave and later indentured labour) and other staple commodities, we immediately become an integral and central part of the then global economy of Western Europe, West Africa and the Americas. That for the greater part of 500 years we have had to deal with all that globalization has meant. That in our early period of sugar production there was no free trade. That trade only took place between the colonizer and its particular colony of conquest and that it was therefore unthinkable for Barbados, say -, to sell sugar to Spain. But once the European economies had matured on the basis of the huge surpluses which we exported, and our sugar became uncompetitive with that of Brazil, Australia and European Beet, mercantilism – an old economic theory that money is the only form of wealth – mercantilism took over and out went trade protection and in came free trade. Our small and fragile economies in the West Indies and other parts of the dependant developing World were left to fend for themselves. At this May Day rally, I spoke a good forty-five minutes or so-sharing my views and understandings of the precariousness of life in the weaker economies of our region post FTAA and a fully globalised world economy. The Grenadian workers and the poor seem to appreciate the massively challenging problem that faces us at the hands of concentrated international capital. It will certainly help if one can say the same for the rest of the Caribbean people and our politicians in government. It is of some significance through that Chairman of the IMF-created G24 grouping is addressing one part of the problem – i.e. the serious imbalances which have resulted in the last 20 years of substantial net transfer of resources from developing countries to the Multilateral development banks and the developed or G8 countries. Have a Good Evening
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