Senior Multimedia Reporter
radhica.sookraj@guardian.co.tt
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has condemned the actions of Oilfield Workers Trade Union President General Ancel Roget and his team, who burned photographs of himself and Energy Minister Stuart Young while singing Roget’s calypso The Truth outside the Pointe-a-Pierre refinery on yesterday.
During a press conference outside the refinery, Roget said that since its shutdown, the Government had spent $43 billion importing fuels, robbing the country of a major foreign exchange earner. He then burned the photos as he accused Rowley of hoodwinking the union.
Responding to Roget’s actions, Dr Rowley 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.”
The burning of the photographs was also strongly condemned by Minister Young, who said, “That type of behaviour is unfortunately a reflection on the individual carrying it out.”
While advocating for freedom of expression, Young emphasised, “It should always be reasonable, responsible, and ideally respectful. I am never deterred from carrying out my duties to the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago by those who have self-serving agendas and narrow narratives.”
Roget and his team held the press conference after hearing that bidders were conducting daily site visits on the mothballed refinery, which had been shut down by the Government in November 2018 following the closure of state-owned Petrotrin.
Roget, a director at the OWTU’s company Patriotic Energies and Technologies, has been tirelessly fighting for the right to operate the refinery since 2019, spending tens of millions of dollars in legal fees to get their bid in.
However, on Friday, Roget disclosed that Patriotic never had the chance to do a full site visit of the refinery before submitting its bid on May 10, even though other bidders had detailed tours.
“We were not afforded a full tour of all of the plants in the refinery. Look how they are deceitful and deceptive. They expected us in three hours to assess the refinery to put in a proper bid. A refinery that has been shut down since November 2018,” Roget revealed.
Saying the refinery was “cannibalised” by people who took parts, spares and other materials from the plants, Roget said they were still able to put in a proper bid despite being denied the chance to view all the plants.
“We know those plants when they were shut down, we know the condition of those plants and we know the rate of deterioration. They held us to a hard deadline to submit the bid by May 10 and now they allowing other bidders to come and tour the plants. Up to yesterday (Thursday), someone was inside the refinery to go and take site visits for the whole day. This PNM Government is not honest,” he said.
He accused Rowley of repeatedly trying to deceive Patriotic despite being the preferred bidder against 72 other competitors in the refinery acquisition process. Roget said they will be asking for another site visit tour saying Patriotic’s bid was always subject to another site visit.
Roget also claimed the Prime Minister had opened the bidding process to accommodate friends and financiers, failing to give Patriotic a fair opportunity.
Dramatically burning the photos, Roget claimed the Prime Minister would soon declare the nine bids submitted before May 10 inadequate, favouring a sale to Indian industrialist Naveen Jindal.
Challenging Rowley and Minister Young to a public debate on why the refinery was shuttered and how much the country has lost as a result, Roget questioned why Jindal met with the Prime Minister at the Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s last month.
“Whether it is in Skinners Park, NAPA, SAPA, or the Queen’s Park Savannah, we challenge you, Prime Minister. You can bring Young and even Randall Mitchell. We challenge you to a national debate, and you will end up just like Biden because I know that you know nothing about running a refinery, and you know even less about running a country,” Roget said.
He asserted that the debate would prove only the former Petrotrin workers knew how to run the refinery.
“We challenge you in that debate to answer the questions on how best the refinery can be operated. You bring your team, and we’ll bring ours,” Roget stated.
Roget also criticised Rowley for meeting with Jindal, the chairman of Jindal Steel and Power Ltd, who faces criminal charges in India.
Roget claimed that if Patriotic Technologies were approved to run the refinery, his team could bring several refinery plants into working order within nine months. He explained that former Petrotrin workers are familiar with the refinery and are the only ones qualified to have it up and running.
Last month, the Prime Minister revealed there were nine bidders in the negotiation process. The Government is currently reviewing bids and is expected to sell the refinery by August.