For the second straight year, members of the National Trade Union Centre (Natuc) were blocked by police from marching to Charlie King Junction, Fyzabad, during Labour Day celebrations yesterday.
This year, police officers in riot gear formed a barricade across the roadway, effectively ending Natuc’s procession at around 1 pm as the group crested Lum Tack Hill in Fyzabad. Secretary general Michael Annisette, who spoke workers with a microphone, brought the march to a halt and said the police had stopped his vehicle from going any further.
Less than 200 metres away at Charlie King Junction, leaders of the Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM) could be heard addressing workers. Annisette spent some time speaking with the officers, telling them they could not prevent his members from entering Charlie King Junction in remembrance of labour leader Tubal Uriah “Buzz” Butler.
Surrounded by members, a defiant Annisette later told the T&T Guardian the labour group was being targeted by those in power.
“They are saying we can’t pass here because we wasn’t in some stakeholder meeting, but we would have written to them three weeks ago telling them the route we will be passing,” he said.
“And as I pointed out to the senior officer, there is a historical antecedent about Fyzabad and if you deny us the right to march through Fyzabad, it’s serves no purpose coming to Fyzabad, you are destroying the concept of what the Fyzabad march means to us.”
“You allow one group to go so and then tell us have to go another route. No, that cannot be so.”
Annisette said the presence of a few dozen armed heavily-armed officers accompanying Natuc’s leg of the Labour Day march was reminiscent of anti-apartheid marches in South Africa.
“We have a concern in Natuc that we are here on a peaceful march and look at how many armed police have come out and are marching in front of us. That conveys an impression that we are in South Africa, when Mandela was fighting for apartheid.
“I don’t mind police coming, but what is the need for all of this tear gas and those kind of machine guns...big, big guns, against workers? Come on! And there are children in the march too.” He claimed the move was an attempt to destabilise Natuc.
“This is the only union being treated in this manner. Fyzabad is a public place, Fyzabad is not the domain of any one public group or federation...I am a citizen of T&T and if I am denied the right to march through Fyzabad on this Labour Day, this tells me that we are going back into the 19th century.”
However, the police officers did not budge and Natuc members eventually compromised by leaving their music truck and banners behind and walking to Charlie King Junction in pairs flanked by heavily armed officers who cleared a path through the crowds for them to pass, one at a time.