KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

De­spite Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s con­dem­na­tion, the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) con­tin­ues to sym­bol­i­cal­ly burn im­ages of Gov­ern­ment mem­bers, ac­cus­ing them of spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the ter­mi­na­tion pack­ages for for­mer Petrotrin em­ploy­ees.

As the rain driz­zled along Mos­qui­to Creek, South Oropouche, yes­ter­day, OW­TU mem­bers chipped in as pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get sang his ca­lyp­so, The Truth, over a lit bar­rel. He told re­porters that the OW­TU want­ed to burn the lies and the mis­in­for­ma­tion Row­ley ped­dles re­gard­ing the re­struc­tur­ing of Petrotrin.

The OW­TU burned pho­tographs of Row­ley, Young, and Hinds in a bar­rel la­belled “Stal­in Bun em.” They al­so burned a pho­to of Row­ley shak­ing hands with Naveen Jin­dal, chair­man of In­dia’s Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er Lim­it­ed, who has an in­ter­est in the re­fin­ery.

Re­spond­ing to last week’s “burn­ing” out­side the Pointe-a-Pierre round­about, Row­ley had said, “If I was a union leader who bank­rupt­ed the coun­try’s ma­jor trade union and stu­pid­ly re­fused an em­ploy­ee stock own­er­ship in a prof­itable re­struc­tured com­pa­ny (Her­itage/Paria), then I, too, might have gone mad and write a dirge of a ca­lyp­so and sing it out of tune to my­self.”

In re­sponse yes­ter­day, Ro­get said land and stock own­er­ship in Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny was a top­ic Row­ley and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young tend to dis­cuss around elec­tion time. “Ab­solute­ly no for­mer em­ploy­ee of Petrotrin, from 2018 to present, has ever been of­fered any pro­pos­al or any op­tion for stock own­er­ship in Her­itage or Paria,” Ro­get said.

Ro­get said an­oth­er mis­in­for­ma­tion ped­dled was that for­mer Petrotrin work­ers got land. He said a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­sponse showed that no el­i­gi­ble for­mer em­ploy­ee re­ceived a deed and ran­dom­ly se­lect­ed ben­e­fi­cia­ries were be­ing processed.

“That has not hap­pened, and we liken that agree­ment to the Ca­roni agree­ment in the clo­sure of Ca­roni. They con­tin­ue to op­er­ate a lot­tery sys­tem and con­tin­ue to fool the peo­ple and tell them it is be­ing processed.”

He said this has been the case since 2020 and will con­tin­ue to be an elu­sive dream for the for­mer em­ploy­ees if the PNM re­turns to gov­ern­ment. Re­spond­ing to Row­ley say­ing he bank­rupt­ed the OW­TU, Ro­get said the Gov­ern­ment at­tempt­ed to fi­nan­cial­ly ru­in the union by en­gag­ing them in an ac­qui­si­tion process for the re­fin­ery and re­tract­ing the of­fer.

The in­tent was to en­tice the OW­TU to ex­pend sig­nif­i­cant funds to ac­quire the re­fin­ery. Ro­get said that while Row­ley failed to de­stroy the OW­TU, his move left peo­ple with­out a liveli­hood and hope. “We did not bank­rupt the union; he bank­rupt­ed the coun­try,” Ro­get said, hold­ing up a news­pa­per sto­ry on the de­ba­cle in­volv­ing the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s of­fice and un­ver­i­fied bil­lions of dol­lars in rev­enue.

He hit back at the Gov­ern­ment, say­ing the OW­TU does not en­gage its au­di­tors in court for re­fus­ing to “cook the books.” He said that every year the union’s books are au­dit­ed by in­ter­nal and Gov­ern­ment au­di­tors.

The OW­TU in­tends to vis­it sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties to con­tin­ue the sym­bol­ic burn­ings. Ro­get said sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties have al­ready in­vit­ed the union to car­ry out the act. Re­spond­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Row­ley said those ac­tions do not con­tribute any­thing to solv­ing the prob­lem.

Ro­get al­so la­belled Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds’ boast that he was proud of his work as ob­nox­ious, in­sen­si­tive, cal­lous, and dis­re­spect­ful. Call­ing Hinds the “min­is­ter of na­tion­al in­se­cu­ri­ty,” Ro­get said there were 17 peo­ple mur­dered in one week­end as crime head­lined news­pa­pers.

He said while peo­ple cow­er, min­is­ters have armed state se­cu­ri­ty.

Ram­nar­ine don’t want

to see re­fin­ery ‘fire sale’

Mean­while, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said the econ­o­my and crime will fea­ture heav­i­ly in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, and the re­fin­ery will be a big­ger is­sue in the elec­tion than it was in 2020.

He was speak­ing at Wednes­day’s UNC San Fer­nan­do West Bud­get Con­sul­ta­tions.

“As it’s not go­ing away, there’s a wound in south and cen­tral Trinidad that isn’t felt by the peo­ple who closed the re­fin­ery, all of whom don’t live in there,” Ram­nar­ine added.

He said clo­sure neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties from Point Fortin to Gas­par­il­lo and “Mara­bel­la’s dead.”

Ram­nar­ine claimed Trin­mar’s of­fice was be­ing “giv­en to some min­istry,” and Beach Camp was al­so be­ing giv­en to an­oth­er min­istry. Ram­nar­ine, rub­bish­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s re­fin­ery clo­sure state­ments, de­fend­ed the PP gov­ern­ment’s record, say­ing Petrotrin paid tax­es and was prof­itable. Like Jack­man, he blamed Petrotrin’s is­sues on the US$1.6B bor­row­ing in 2007 and 2009 un­der the past PNM Gov­ern­ment.

Ram­nar­ine said the PP gov­ern­ment “met a house on fire” with oth­er Petrotrin projects and had to “right side the com­pa­ny.”

Ram­nar­ine said he would not like to see re­fin­ery sold through “fire sale.”

“Hu­man re­sources re­quired to restart are right here in T&T. We don’t need for­eign con­sul­tants to tell us how,” he added, say­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties abound and the UNC’s made it clear, “When we re­sume gov­ern­ment in 2025, we’ll restart the re­fin­ery.”