A coali­tion of 13 in­de­pen­dent trade unions, call­ing them­selves the Pro­gres­sive In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions, has for­mal­ly re­quest­ed an ur­gent meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar over State of Emer­gency (SoE) reg­u­la­tions re­strict­ing pub­lic demon­stra­tions with­in 500 me­tres of 15 des­ig­nat­ed lo­ca­tions, even as the Gov­ern­ment sig­nals it is not back­ing down on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures in­tro­duced un­der the emer­gency frame­work.

The re­quest was de­liv­ered at White Hall yes­ter­day by a del­e­ga­tion led by Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe, who said the unions were seek­ing di­a­logue rather than con­fronta­tion over what they de­scribe as an im­prac­ti­cal re­stric­tion on protest ac­tiv­i­ty.

The is­sue cen­tres on a 500-me­tre ex­clu­sion zone that unions ar­gue se­vere­ly lim­its their abil­i­ty to stage vis­i­ble demon­stra­tions and rep­re­sent work­ers ef­fec­tive­ly.