Still seek­ing an­swers on Petrotrin, for­mer work­ers and the re­fin­ery.

That’s what the Op­po­si­tion’s pur­su­ing ac­cord­ing to Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress whip David Lee, who said yes­ter­day that Gov­ern­ment should have told the pub­lic the val­ue of the re­fin­ery as­sets be­fore “rush­ing” to of­fer them on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket ear­ly next year. The Op­po­si­tion is fil­ing queries on Petrotrin for a re­ply in Par­lia­ment to­day.

“The is­sue of pro­cure­ment looms large in this as­pect of the Petrotrin is­sue since Gov­ern­ment has said it will of­fer the re­fin­ery - for in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. We’ve heard about a da­ta room and in­for­ma­tion be­ing pre­pared for peo­ple to learn about the as­sets, but there’s been no pub­lic word on the val­ue or oth­er per­ti­nent de­tails,” Lee said.

Lee al­so said de­spite pay­ments to work­ers - in­clud­ing some tem­po­rary work­ers - there are oth­ers who are in “lim­bo” re­gard­ing ben­e­fits since they worked tem­porar­i­ly at Petrotrin for a ma­jor­i­ty of years but were per­ma­nent for a mi­nor­i­ty of years.

On the In­come Tax Amend­ment Bill which was passed in the Sen­ate on Tues­day- af­ter large amend­ments and pas­sage in the Low­er House last week - Lee said the Op­po­si­tion will mon­i­tor Gov­ern­ment’s next step af­ter the bill is pro­claimed. The bill was need­ed to meet the Caribbean Fi­nan­cial Task Force and Glob­al Fo­rum for­mats to pre­vent mon­ey laun­der­ing, ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing and tax eva­sion re­spec­tive­ly.

The bill’s pas­sage met CFATF’s re­cent dead­line but claus­es of the bill re­quired to meet GF for­mats were delet­ed in or­der for Gov­ern­ment to pass it with a sim­ple mi­nor­i­ty of votes. The Op­po­si­tion re­fused to pro­vide the sup­port which the bill need­ed for spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty claus­es to be passed.

Fol­low­ing Tues­day’s pas­sage, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said the bill will be pro­claimed and sent to the Glob­al Fo­rum as soon as pos­si­ble.

If the GF is sat­is­fied with the bill, T&T may have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sign a mul­ti­lat­er­al treaty the GF had ear­li­er re­fused to al­low un­til the bill was en­act­ed as law. The GF will al­so have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to say what fur­ther re­quire­ments they need for the bill and two oth­ers which were part of the ini­tial pack­age with the ITA bill.