ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC – Police officers in riot gear, used tear gas Wednesday, in a bid to end protest action by truckers, who used their vehicles to block the main highway on the west coast of the island, leaving hundreds of people stranded and unable to travel to work and school.
“We are hoping that some common sense will prevail. Our position still remains the same. We really would want to have guarantees that every time there is a project on island that we have some form of say in it.
“We all have to eat and survive in the same country,” said Everson Magloire of the Tipper Truckers Association, as he sought shelter from the tear gas dispersed by the police at Canefield, three miles north of the capital.
“As long as the government has a contract, give it to any company, we the locals need 80 per cent of the work, that’s what we want,” said another trucker.
The government has not issued any statement regarding the protest, but in 2021, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit ”assured the truckers my government was sympathetic to their plight,” after he and senior government ministers and officials held talks with several truckers to address their problems.
The truckers have in the past accused the Skerrit government of favouring foreign trucking firms on national projects and from early Wednesday they parked their dump and trailer trucks across the lanes on the EO Leblanc Highway, blocking access into and out of the capital.
Residents in nearby communities say that they have been affected by the tear gas, with one woman saying “I was in my house with my seven children …when the tear gas started coming in.
“We have seven young children under the age of 12, a bay just a year old experiencing this kind of thing. It has been very bad,” she told reporters.
One of the protestors said he is disappointed with the action of the police “because there was no need to use tear gas against us”
Attorney Ronald Charles, representing one of the truckers who had been arrested, said his client had been charged with “assault and released on station bail”.
He said his client was beaten and he has since advised that he seek medical attention.
“He will appear in court tomorrow where the charge will be read to him and we will take it from there,” Charles said.
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