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Did Government do it?

www.newsday.co.tt

The serious charge by a representative of striking Bechtel International workers, Ernest Thompson, that Government had reportedly blocked a move by Bechtel to pay interim monies to the strikers should not be casually dismissed. Instead, an investigation should be ordered into the claim as it questions the bona fides of Government particularly with respect to its widely publicised efforts at conciliation, and at a time when the country is facing its worst industrial crisis since Independence.

Thompson, in speaking with media representatives outside of Whitehall on Thursday, said he had received the information from "sources" who had reportedly attended a meeting on Tuesday between senior officials of Atlantic LNG and Bechtel International. His statement was made following a march on Thursday morning of scores of striking Bechtel workers from City Gate through the streets of Port-of-Spain to Whitehall. It was clearly not enough for Acting Prime Minister, Joan Yuille-Williams, to have offered on Thursday that she was not aware of any such directive being issued by the Government, and that the subject of the strike of construction workers at the Atlantic Train Four project at Point Fortin had not been discussed at the Cabinet meeting earlier that day.

Senator Yuille-Williams' use of the term "not aware" may be instructive, as it is very often a turn of phrase employed by Government Ministers as well as top public servants when they have not received important information in writing. At best the phrase "not aware" means, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, not being conscious of or not having knowledge of. Why did the Acting Prime Minister not deny Thompson's claim outright, and is the disinterested observer entitled to read any significance into this? Why did Yuille-Williams not simply say that Thompson's advice to the media was incorrect?

Surely, as acting Prime Minister, Yuille-Williams was or should have been in a position to have made a definitive statement on a matter of such national importance. Why, then, did she use this approach? Is it that whichever Government Minister, providing of course that this was so, had told this to the company officials had not passed it on to Yuille-Williams? Or had the acting PM dismissed the report as untrue and unimportant? It may emerge that a Government Minister or either an ALNG or Bechtel official may have been misquoted, however unintentionally. Nonetheless, there is an emotive aspect to the charge of Government's reported intervention, as yet not denied outright officially, which requires the Administration to issue an authoritative statement, as early as possible. Delay is in no one's interests.

Trinidad and Tobago News

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