To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

There can be lit­tle doubt that there is some le­git­i­ma­cy in the ba­sic premise of those who, on Thurs­day, called on Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Con­rad Enill to pro­vide a cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis and a de­tailed ac­count­ing of the costs of the Alutrint alu­mini­um smelter.

While the an­ti-smelter ac­tivists, Wayne Kublals­ingh, Pe­ter Vine and Cathal Healy-Singh, may be a bit too con­cerned with at­tempt­ing pub­lic­i­ty stunts aimed at grab­bing the na­tion­al spot­light, they do have a point when they ar­gue for greater ac­count­abil­i­ty with re­gard to the spend­ing of pub­lic monies. Ear­ly in the process of de­vel­op­ing the alu­mini­um smelter in La Brea, the Gov­ern­ment should have pro­vid­ed the coun­try with a com­pre­hen­sive cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis based on var­i­ous price sce­nar­ios for the cost of in­puts and the av­er­age sale price of the alu­mini­um prod­ucts.

Such in­for­ma­tion would pro­vide the pub­lic with the no­tion that the Gov­ern­ment's ex­pen­di­ture of bil­lions of dol­lars in de­vel­op­ing the smelter, the elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion plant and the port is not on­ly an in­vest­ment in an in­dus­try, but a vote of con­fi­dence in the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of an en­tire com­mu­ni­ty. The de­vel­op­ment of the alu­mini­um smelter in La Brea clear­ly would cre­ate thou­sands of di­rect jobs linked to the con­struc­tion of the fa­cil­i­ty and the pro­duc­tion of alu­mini­um. Most of these high-pay­ing, in­dus­tri­al jobs would re­quire skilled work­ers with post-sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion. The lo­ca­tion of a smelter would mean the es­tab­lish­ment of new skills/train­ing fa­cil­i­ties in the La Brea area which would, in turn, lead to youths in south-west Trinidad as­pir­ing to get the ed­u­ca­tion nec­es­sary to work in the smelter.

But the es­tab­lish­ment of the smelter would al­so lead to thou­sands more in­di­rect jobs. As work­ers move in­to the area with their fam­i­lies, hous­es and hous­ing de­vel­op­ments would have to be built. Schools, health cen­tres, places of wor­ship would have to be con­struct­ed, along with play­grounds and oth­er recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties. The re­lo­ca­tion of hun­dreds of peo­ple to the area would lead to the es­tab­lish­ment of re­tail stores and restau­rants and su­per­mar­kets cater­ing to the needs of the res­i­dents, both re­cent and well es­tab­lished. As the suc­cess of the com­mu­ni­ties around the LNG fa­cil­i­ties in Point Fortin and the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate has demon­strat­ed, there is noth­ing that brings jobs and wealth to an area more than the lo­ca­tion of prof­itable, high-pay­ing in­dus­tries in it. The Gov­ern­ment should have tak­en the time to out­line its vi­sion for south-west Trinidad by point­ing to the huge ben­e­fits to be de­rived for the com­mu­ni­ty and the coun­try by the es­tab­lish­ment of the smelter.

By de­clin­ing to pro­vide the cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis and the full ac­count­ing of its ex­pen­di­ture on the project to date, the Gov­ern­ment is giv­ing up a ma­jor op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plain that it is not on­ly in­vest­ing in a smelter, it is in­vest­ing in a com­mu­ni­ty–one that has been ne­glect­ed some­what as a re­sult of the de­cline in on­shore crude pro­duc­tion. And this is not even to say that now would be the right time to di­vulge the cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis, giv­en the fact that the State is fight­ing a le­gal bat­tle against the an­ti-smelter pro­test­ers for which a rul­ing is pend­ing in the Court of Ap­peal and with every prospect of a fi­nal ap­peal to the Privy Coun­cil.

It is al­so in­con­ceiv­able that a min­is­ter would pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on the cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis of the smelter to on­ly a hand­ful of well-known an­ti-smelter pro­test­ers who barged in­to the min­istry's build­ing on the one morn­ing of the week when he at­tends Cab­i­net and staged a sit-in protest. Those who are call­ing on the min­is­ter to pro­vide the cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis and the full cost ac­count­ing may even­tu­al­ly re­alise that they are do­ing their cause no good by adopt­ing these tac­tics. The use of less con­fronta­tion­al meth­ods to draw at­ten­tion to their griev­ances may ac­tu­al­ly be more suc­cess­ful in achiev­ing their ob­jec­tive.