Sascha Wil­son

"Talk is cheap." That's the re­sponse of Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for La Brea Fitzger­ald Jef­fery to a promise by his op­po­nent for the seat that a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-led coali­tion gov­ern­ment would scrap the $703 mil­lion alu­mini­um smelter project. Ernesto Ke­sar, Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) Trin­mar branch pres­i­dent, who is con­test­ing the seat on a UNC coali­tion tick­et, had said last Sun­day at the UNC-coali­tion ral­ly that they would be look­ing at agri­cul­ture as an al­ter­na­tive to smelter.

But speak­ing to re­porters af­ter an an­nu­al ca­reer path ex­po at Point Fortin East Sec­ondary School yes­ter­day, Jef­fery said when the UNC was in gov­ern­ment they had planned to build two smelters in cen­tral Trinidad. "So I don't un­der­stand the log­ic in what they are say­ing," he said. He said peo­ple would be work­ing for low wages in an agro pro­cess­ing plant. "Is in the petro chem­i­cal in­dus­try where peo­ple get high salaries," he said.

To make his point, Jef­fery made ref­er­ence to cen­tral Trinidad where, he said, peo­ple were able to pros­per bet­ter be­cause of high salaries. "We want to see that hap­pen­ing in the south-west­ern penin­su­la," he said. Jef­fery, who lives down­hill from the pro­posed smelter site, said his de­trac­tors were spread­ing pro­pa­gan­da, say­ing that he had a house in West­moor­ings to where he was go­ing to move. How­ev­er, he said, most of La Brea res­i­dents were pro-smelter and the ma­jor­i­ty of those op­pose to it were out­siders.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress ear­li­er, Jef­fery, al­so the Min­is­ter of State in the Min­istry of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion, said at a time when the coun­try and by ex­ten­sion the world were de­vel­op­ing at such a rapid pace, it was not enough to ac­quire a skill with­out giv­ing thought to the con­tin­ued at­tain­ment of new in­for­ma­tion in the field. "The process of ob­tain­ing valu­able in­for­ma­tion is an un­remit­ting one, and as we sit here to­day, I en­cour­age you all to con­sid­er the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing the rel­e­vance of your re­spec­tive achieve­ments," he said.