Member of Parliament for Couva/South Rudranath Indarsingh react in utter disbelief to Prime Minister Keith Rowley’s announcement that one of the ten achievements of government was preservation of jobs.

Mr. Indarsingh called the Prime Minister’s pronouncement in the parliament last friday a continuation of his government’s deception and propaganda campaign which has now reached unprecedented heights.

In a release he said the Dr. Rowley-led PNM government had failed to create any new jobs and workers have become an endangered specie under his tenure.

He asks how can Dr. Rowley speak about preservation of jobs when over 30,000 workers have lost their jobs in the public and private sectors since he became Prime Minister and this number keeps growing every week?

Mr. Indarsingh, the opposition labour and enterprise development critic, questioned the yardstick the Prime Minister used to list “preservation of jobs” as one of his administration’s achievements when the industrial relations and the collective bargaining process have sunk to an all time low. Added to this he said and the memorandum of understanding signed with the Joint Trade Union movement has been totally abandoned.

The former Minister of State in the Ministries of Labor and Finance lamented that the current Ministers of government never had the time to address the closure of companies and workers issues in the State and private sector such as Arcelor Mittal, Tourism Development Company, Caribbean Nitrogen Company Limited, Caroni Green Ltd, Seafood Industry Limited and GISL just to name a few.

He says right now, workers at Petrotrin, UTT, BIR and Customs and Excise, WASA and T&TEC are unsure of their future and are hoping that the Prime Minister will ensure that their jobs are those on his preservation list.