Petrotrin will of­fi­cial­ly shut down its op­er­a­tions on No­vem­ber 30 fol­low­ing a mas­sive re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise which will see new en­ti­ties tak­ing over the busi­ness it once con­duct­ed there­after, be­gin­ning to­day, the T&T Guardian will look at how this will im­pact some of the com­mu­ni­ties sur­round­ing the re­fin­ery, start­ing with Gas­par­il­lo.

Busi­ness­es in fence-line com­mu­ni­ties such as Gas­par­il­lo, Mara­bel­la, Mau­caulay, Co­coyea and Clax­ton Bay are brac­ing for re­duced sales, few­er cus­tomers and tough days ahead with the full clo­sure of Petrotrin this month-end.

Gas­par­il­lo Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Anil Ramjit said the com­mu­ni­ty was dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed with re­fin­ery work­ers, con­tract work­ers from 30-plus ser­vice com­pa­nies, as well as con­trac­tors who de­pend­ed on Petrotrin for a liv­ing. The peo­ple al­so sup­port the busi­ness­es in the area.

“It will def­i­nite­ly im­pact our busi­ness,” Ramjit told Guardian Me­dia.

Ramjit con­firmed that since Au­gust many of the busi­ness­es had start­ed ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a de­cline in cus­tomers and the quan­ti­ty of busi­ness they nor­mal­ly do.

He said, “Busi­ness de­clined im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment (Petrotrin clo­sure) and has been very very slow since.”

At Medlife Phar­ma­cy, sales had slowed con­sid­er­ably since the an­nounce­ment. How­ev­er, a work­er said her boss was in­tent on serv­ing the pub­lic for as long he could.

To en­sure this, she said, “We are try­ing to source goods at cheap­er prices so we can make it more af­ford­able for our cus­tomers.”

The own­er/op­er­a­tor of Go­sine’s Dou­bles, who did not want to give his name, said, “It af­fect­ing every­body and every­thing. I don’t think any small man in this coun­try can do any­thing.”

How­ev­er, he was adamant that he was not go­ing to end his busi­ness.

“It could be who and what­ev­er they do, we will sur­vive, we don’t have any oth­er choice. It will be hard­er but to sur­vive, we will. We may have to con­sid­er re­turn­ing to the grass­roots but we will sur­vive.”

A fe­male cus­tomer agreed, “Life out here right now is re­al­ly tough and plen­ty peo­ple may re­al­ly have to close down their small busi­ness­es. It have plen­ty peo­ple who can’t af­ford to pay rent right now and have to close down...it’s hard.”

Fruit ven­dor Raquib Khan, 33, has been sell­ing his pro­duce for close to five years along the Gas­par­il­lo Main Road. Count­ing sev­er­al Petrotrin em­ploy­ees among his cus­tomers, Khan said, “It is so un­for­tu­nate.”

Al­though he has not yet ex­pe­ri­enced any fall-out, Khan said he knows it is in­evitable.

At S&N Roti Shop, the pro­pri­etor said she had al­ready re­duced the amount of food be­ing cooked on a dai­ly ba­sis.

“Things have got­ten re­al­ly slow,” she said, re­quest­ing her name not be used.

She, how­ev­er, said since tak­ing over the busi­ness one year ago she had ex­pe­ri­enced good and bad times.

Asked if the slow­down in busi­ness had any­thing to do with the de­ci­sion to close down Petrotrin, she said: “Yes, in a way, be­cause a lot of my cus­tomers worked there and since this hap­pened I haven’t seen any­body and I know it is go­ing to get worse.”

In­di­cat­ing it had af­fect­ed her bot­tom line, the woman ex­plained, “We have to watch how we are spend­ing and we are cook­ing less and less now.”

With three work­ers on the pay­roll, she said, “Right now we are giv­ing them days off to stag­ger the work­load so that we can keep all three for now, but I am not sure how much longer we can do that.”

She said all their in­come was go­ing to­wards pay­ing rent and pur­chas­ing ma­te­ri­als to be chan­nelled back in­to the busi­ness.

Res­i­dent Rosan­na Ram­baran pre­dict­ed things would get worse for peo­ple liv­ing, work­ing and rent­ing in Gas­par­il­lo, as she said many of those in the area were em­ployed at the re­fin­ery.

A woman op­er­at­ing a small break­fast and lunch shop es­ti­mat­ed that her sales had dropped by 50 per cent on most days.

She said, “We had a lot of cus­tomers from there (Petrotrin) and with sales down, we have to be mind­ful about the fu­ture.”

Fac­ing in­creased prices at the mar­ket and gro­cery, she added, “We are feel­ing the hard sting of it and we have to think care­ful­ly.”

Poul­try shop own­er Rasheed Ali added, “Even be­fore Petrotrin (clo­sure an­nounce­ment) sales have been slow. We are in a re­ces­sion and you have to ex­pect that.”

How­ev­er, he is not ig­no­rant of the fact that there is more fall-out to come.

“We are ex­pect­ing it but what could we do?” he added.

Op­er­at­ing for the past 28 years, he said, “We have low­ered our stan­dards a lit­tle be­cause it can­not be busi­ness as usu­al, it can­not be spend­ing as usu­al and it can­not be lim­ing as usu­al, so we have to take stock of our­selves and our own bud­get.”

Over at the Gas­par­il­lo Mall, a hand­ful of op­er­a­tors could not say how much longer they would be able to con­tin­ue to main­tain their busi­ness­es, as they too said sales had de­clined dras­ti­cal­ly.

Sec­ondary re­trench­ment starts

Gas­par­il­lo Cham­ber pres­i­dent Anil Ramjit says sec­ondary re­trench­ment is al­ready oc­cur­ring with­in the com­mu­ni­ty as a re­sult of the im­pend­ing Petrotirn clo­sure.

“Some peo­ple have had to down­size al­most im­me­di­ate­ly to sur­vive and some are try­ing to hold on as long as they can to see if things set­tle down, but we are look­ing at small busi­ness­es down­siz­ing im­me­di­ate­ly,” Ramjit told the T&T Guardian.

A for­mer Petrotrin em­ploy­ee him­self, Ramjit is scep­ti­cal that the new com­pa­nies tak­ing over Petrotrin’s busi­ness will be able to op­er­a­tionalise with­in a time frame that will re­duce the neg­a­tive im­pact the re­fin­ery clo­sure will have on com­mu­ni­ties.

Speak­ing about the mis­trust of the Gov­ern­ment and their promis­es, Ramjit said the is­sue was shroud­ed in se­cre­cy from the very start and the mis­in­for­ma­tion be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed was de­lib­er­ate and cal­cu­lat­ed.

“We do not trust them be­cause they were less than hon­est with the fig­ures thus far, and know­ing there were these com­pa­nies com­ing on stream. They chose to mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion in­to think­ing they were go­ing to keep Petrotrin open and re­struc­ture, then a month af­ter you are hear­ing about the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny,” Ramjit said.

“They are say­ing the re­fin­ery is not prof­itable and if it isn’t, I don’t see them bring­ing back the re­fin­ery any time, so I re­al­ly do not know what is go­ing on.”

Dis­miss­ing the idea that the cham­ber’s con­cerns were po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed, he added, “The sto­ry has been chang­ing from day one and makes no sense.”

The as­sets of Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery are to be trans­ferred to a new en­ti­ty —Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny—one of four sub­sidiaries of a new hold­ing com­pa­ny, Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, which re­places the debt-bur­dened state-owned hy­dro­car­bon en­ti­ty.

The oth­er com­pa­nies to fall un­der the hold­ing com­pa­ny are Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um and Petrotrin, which will re­main an en­ti­ty in name on­ly when it is fi­nal­ly shut down on No­vem­ber 30.

Ramjit was crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the mat­ter, not­ing, “They have not been hon­est with the pop­u­la­tion be­cause to start three com­pa­nies, it does not hap­pen overnight.”

He said the req­ui­site process­es to es­tab­lish a com­pa­ny would take a cou­ple weeks and, “they (Gov­ern­ment) would have known full well they in­tend­ed to do this thing yet still chose to hide it.”

He said while there was noth­ing wrong with want­i­ng to re­struc­ture and split the Petrotrin as­sets, it was be­ing done in a man­ner that had cre­at­ed a lot of “pan­de­mo­ni­um and pan­ic.”

Calls for greater se­cu­ri­ty

Gas­par­il­lo busi­ness own­ers have re­newed their call for firearms so they can pro­tect them­selves against the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

Aaseen “Tik­ki” Ali is no stranger to crime, as his son Naail Ali was kid­napped in 2008. The fam­i­ly on­ly found clo­sure in 2011 from the re­mains were found.

The own­er of A&S Hard­ware and Fur­ni­ture Store, Ali said he was brac­ing for a more sin­is­ter twist to the en­tire Petrotrin clo­sure mat­ter.

“When Petrotrin is closed down on No­vem­ber 30, good peo­ple will turn bad,”Ali pre­dict­ed.

He added: “We are in for rough times in this coun­try. I don’t know how rough it will get but if it comes to that I will have to close down. I will have no choice but to do that be­cause things are not easy at all.”

Ali be­lieves if busi­ness­men are al­lowed to car­ry firearms it would act as a de­ter­rent to ban­dits.

“I think ban­dits are cow­ards and afraid. If a ban­dit knows a busi­ness­man has a firearm he would think twice about com­ing around be­cause a busi­ness­man would not hes­i­tate to use his firearm,” he said.

How­ev­er, he dis­missed mi­gra­tion as an op­tion.

Ali said, “The on­ly rea­son I am stay­ing here now is be­cause I have too many in­vest­ments in this coun­try and if I go to dis­pose of my as­sets right now t would not be fea­si­ble or prof­itable.”

Asked what mea­sures were be­ing adopt­ed to im­prove se­cu­ri­ty with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, the cham­ber pres­i­dent Ramjit said ef­forts were be­ing made to en­sure CCTV cam­eras were in­stalled at all busi­ness­es and linked to the TTPS’s net­work.

In ad­di­tion, ap­peals have been made for all busi­ness­es to con­sid­er join­ing hands and part­ner­ing fi­nan­cial­ly with the cham­ber to once again have com­mu­ni­ty com­fort pa­trols car­ried out through­out the work day and un­til the close of busi­ness.

Tabquite MP Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan mean­while said he was very con­cerned about the lev­el of crime with­in the Gas­par­il­lo com­mu­ni­ty, adding at­tempts were be­ing made to have po­lice of­fi­cials meet with busi­ness own­ers and res­i­dents to dis­cuss the way for­ward.