RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Al­most five years af­ter Petrotrin was closed down, res­i­den­tial lots to the tune of over $32 mil­lion was giv­en to 180 of its for­mer work­ers yes­ter­day.

The 180 were suc­cess­ful lot­tery draw re­cip­i­ents for the Land Set­tle­ment Agency’s dis­tri­b­u­tion of res­i­den­tial lots to for­mer Petrotrin work­ers.

The draw took place at the au­di­to­ri­um of the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus in Port-of-Spain and was at­tend­ed by sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young and Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Kaz­im Ho­sein.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said that one of the lots cost an av­er­age of $180,000. She said yes­ter­day’s dis­tri­b­u­tion was the fourth ex­er­cise, with the 180 ap­pli­cants to be added to the 250 who al­ready ac­quired lots through the com­put­erised lot­tery draw sys­tem.

Robin­son-Reg­is said they re­ceived 2,816 ap­pli­ca­tions, of which 50 per cent in­di­cat­ed that they were not prop­er­ty own­ers. How­ev­er, af­ter short­list­ing, 1,207 were iden­ti­fied as qual­i­fied ap­pli­cants.

She said when the Gov­ern­ment, led by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, de­cid­ed to halt the re­fin­ery and re­struc­ture the rest of Petrotrin’s op­er­a­tions, “this Gov­ern­ment was not un­mind­ful about the dis­lo­ca­tion that could re­sult and would re­sult from this mo­men­tous de­ci­sion and there­fore he (Row­ley) was equal­ly com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that the em­ploy­ees be pro­vid­ed with a soft land­ing as pos­si­ble.”

Robin­son-Reg­is added, “One fea­ture of that soft land­ing was the pro­vi­sion of ful­ly de­vel­oped res­i­den­tial lots or agri­cul­tur­al lots to for­mer work­ers at Petrotrin. It was spe­cif­ic be­cause we felt it was im­por­tant that land own­er­ship be part of what our Gov­ern­ment did as we re­struc­tured the Petrotrin.”

Suc­cess­ful re­cip­i­ent Shail Black­man, of San Fer­nan­do, said be­ing se­lect­ed in the lot­tery draw was def­i­nite­ly the an­swer to her prayers.

“I am hap­py. Words can­not ex­plain. I am ex­cit­ed for this new step. It is a prayer come through. I did pray about it when they called me about the lot­tery draw, I prayed to Fa­ther God that I want to get through and to­day I did,” Black­man said.

An­oth­er re­cip­i­ent, Dami­am Sargeant of Tu­na­puna, said he was ex­cit­ed.

“I am hap­py. I ap­plied in 2019, 2020, they had just open for ap­pli­ca­tions and when I got the call I was like ‘ok.’ I am elat­ed to have got­ten through and I will be mak­ing this my home, to build some­thing and make it my own for my­self and fam­i­ly,” he said.