Rose­marie Sant

Eigh­teen civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions are ex­press­ing con­cern about what they say is the lack of trans­paren­cy in the de­ci­sion to close down the Petrotrin Re­fin­ery and are de­mand­ing an­swers from the Gov­ern­ment on the process used to ar­rive at the de­ci­sion which they fear will have sig­nif­i­cant fall­out in terms of the so­cial im­pact on vul­ner­a­ble groups and which may al­so re­sult in an in­crease in vi­o­lence against women when the ma­jor­i­ty male-dom­i­nat­ed work­force is sent home.

Speak­ing on be­half of the civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions Fo­lade Mu­to­ta said, “We re­al­ly need to halt on the de­ci­sion,” and re­view the process by which it was tak­en to al­low for one that is more par­tic­i­pa­to­ry.

Mu­to­ta, who is the Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Women’s In­sti­tute for Al­ter­na­tive De­vel­op­ment (WINAD), said no one is im­mune from what is hap­pen­ing and every­one should be con­cerned, “we the peo­ple must speak on this is­sue, what is hap­pen­ing to the work­ers of Petrotrin is hap­pen­ing to all of us, the pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she said.

She said civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions are not in­ter­est­ed in the pol­i­tics of the mat­ter “but we are very con­cerned about the process and the pos­si­ble fall­out of the Petrotrin de­ci­sion.”

She ex­pressed con­cern that “at the heart of the prob­lem is gov­er­nance,” and the mod­el of gov­er­nance which “leaves the pop­u­la­tion out of the de­ci­sion mak­ing process,” which they be­lieve has to change.

The civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions came to­geth­er re­cent­ly un­der the han­dle #IAmPetrotrin, and agreed that the Petrotrin sit­u­a­tion demon­strat­ed the need for an agree­ment be­tween the State and the pop­u­la­tion to for­malise a mech­a­nism to trig­ger cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion in key de­ci­sion mak­ing to be un­der­tak­en by the gov­ern­ment.

The eigh­teen groups lament­ed the ab­sence of “un­bi­ased analy­sis” of the process which led to the de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue the op­er­a­tions at the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, not­ing there has been no di­a­logue with the pop­u­la­tion to al­low cit­i­zens to get an­swers to some crit­i­cal ques­tions.

Those ques­tions, ac­cord­ing to Mu­to­ta, in­clude what fac­tors be­yond the eco­nom­ics were tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion in mak­ing the de­ci­sion, what was the process for ar­riv­ing at the de­ci­sion, what con­sul­ta­tive process was used for de­cid­ing on the course of ac­tion to be im­ple­ment­ed, who were the per­sons or or­gan­i­sa­tions con­sult­ed in analysing the so­cial im­pact of the clo­sure, was a so­cial im­pact as­sess­ment done and what are the re­sults, how will the so­cial costs of the de­ci­sion be mit­i­gat­ed, and what is the hu­man re­sources plan to hu­mane­ly man­age the ex­o­dus of staff?

Mu­to­ta said the civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions are al­so con­cerned whether any thought was giv­en to the im­pact of the pro­posed un­em­ploy­ment of the ma­jor­i­ty male-dom­i­nat­ed work­force on the rates of vi­o­lence against women.

She said civ­il so­ci­ety is ask­ing that there be a “na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion around this is­sue so that the pop­u­la­tion could get the facts out­side of the bi­ased per­spec­tives that are be­ing pre­sent­ed by all the stake­hold­ers.”

Mu­to­ta said the groups are as yet to de­cide whether they will seek a meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in light of their stat­ed con­cerns, or whether there will be protests. “I can’t say whether it will take us to the streets or not,” she added.

But, she said, the civ­il so­ci­ety groups want the Gov­ern­ment to make pub­lic the re­ports that led to the de­ci­sion to close the re­fin­ery, “that is a good first step in trans­paren­cy and good gov­er­nance.”

She said while the de­ci­sion was be­ing pre­sent­ed to the pop­u­la­tion as one that was “steeped in the eco­nom­ics of an un­prof­itable re­fin­ery,” con­sid­er­a­tion must al­so be giv­en to the fall­out in terms of the so­cial im­pact, “good pub­lic pol­i­cy mak­ing must ac­tive­ly seek to be in­formed by the mit­i­ga­tion of such fall­out.”