Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has de­nied any Gov­ern­ment in­ter­fer­ence in the can­cel­la­tion of a Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union (CWU) protest out­side TSTT House yes­ter­day, in­stead ac­cus­ing CWU Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer of en­gag­ing in base­less spec­u­la­tion over the de­ci­sion.

Padarath’s re­sponse came af­ter Ogeer ques­tioned whether some­one had in­ter­vened to have po­lice with­draw per­mis­sion for the demon­stra­tion and sug­gest­ed the move was in­tend­ed to in­tim­i­date her and frus­trate the union’s planned ac­tion.

Re­spond­ing to the me­dia af­ter the protest’s ap­proval was re­scind­ed, Ogeer said, “Maybe some­one who needs to tough­en up called and in­formed the TTPS to give me a good wood to ‘bul­ly me’. Maybe they be­lieve that they should sti­fle, fur­ther sup­press and make work­ers feel frus­trat­ed af­ter stat­ing that we will open­ly protest for what is just­ly ours.”