kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt
Believing that there is a ploy to sell Petrotrin to T&T’s “one per cent,” the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) is intensifying its mobilisation of members to march against Government.
As the OWTU president general Ancel Roget marshalled troops at Petrotrin’s Forest Reserve, Fyzabad yesterday, he decried the ruling’s People’s National Movement and declared that he had no respect for Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and “his band of misfits.” It was like a gospel that the OWTU was sharing as they did in Point Fortin and Pointe-a-Pierre last week.
Roget told workers that the Government and Board of Directors at Petrotrin were incapable of returning the company to profitability. He also maintained that the State-owned company’s lease operatorship and farmout programme was geared at enriching financiers of political parties.
Acknowledging the criticism that the OWTU has receive for its plan to “shut the place down,” Roget said that their fight should be supported by the public as the success of Petrotrin will help to improve their lives.
“When Petrotrin is made viable and successful, Petrotrin can contribute enormously to the national coffers and the running of the economy, so that we will have more money going to the social safety net and dealing with the issues of health and education so that it can improve the quality of life for the citizens.
“If you give Petrotrin to those people who pump fake oil, who bill Petrotrin for oil that they don’t produce and who even, when they produce, sell Petrotrin back their own oil, that money goes into private bank accounts, not into the accounts of the State. When the State loses, the average citizen lose,” Roget said.
He said when Rowley spoke about Petrotrin’s debt to the Government last week, no mention was made that the company contributed approximately $50 billion between 2010 and 2015. As he rallied support in the wake of the company’s plan to restructure, he told workers that it was not their poor decision making and spending on investments such of the failed World Gas to Liquids plant that led to the company’s downfall.
Oil businesses’ revenue goes down when prices and production decreases. However, Roget said Petrotrin has control over its production, but the incompetence of its leadership was preventing its success.
“This is a fight to shed all our PNM and UNC clothes and confront it as it is supposed to be confronted once and for all.”