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Just three days af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)-led Coali­tion of In­ter­ests won the elec­tion, in­terns un­der the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) In­tern­ship Pro­gramme stormed the cor­po­ra­tion’s Mon Re­pos of­fice in San Fer­nan­do, de­mand­ing im­me­di­ate pay­ment of out­stand­ing wages.

The protest, cap­tured in videos that spread wide­ly across so­cial me­dia, showed the work­ers con­fronting a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer on Thurs­day and re­fus­ing to leave the com­pound. One woman was heard shout­ing, “Don’t come and tell us noth­ing. We want our mon­ey right now.” When se­cu­ri­ty ad­vised them to move their demon­stra­tion to the road­way, the work­ers de­fi­ant­ly chant­ed, “We want we cash. Call the po­lice!” An­oth­er pro­test­er told the of­fi­cer to go to MTS and call the au­thor­i­ties.

Frus­trat­ed and an­gry, the work­ers claimed the in­tern­ship pro­gramme was sud­den­ly cut af­ter the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) lost the elec­tion, and they ac­cused San Fer­nan­do East MP and out­go­ing min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning of us­ing the pro­gramme for po­lit­i­cal mileage.