Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) has the sup­port of the gov­ern­ment once their plan for the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery is a ro­bust one.

Speak­ing at the Thick Vil­lage Com­mu­ni­ty in Fyz­abad as the PNM lo­cal gov­ern­ment cam­paign touched down in the UNC strong­hold on Thurs­day night, the Prime Min­is­ter said, "It is in the best in­ter­est of the coun­try that the OW­TU's com­pa­ny Pa­trotric En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Ltd, suc­ceed in own­ing and op­er­at­ing the Guaracara re­fin­ery."

Rub­bish­ing claims of an OW­TU and PNM con­spir­a­cy for the ac­qui­si­tion of the Guaracara re­fin­ery, he said the OW­TU had put for­ward the best of­fer.

"I could ar­gue with Ro­get. I could ar­gue with any one of them there but hav­ing ar­gued with them, I re­spect them I will work with them, that is what it is all about. Be­cause they have their in­ter­est and I have my re­spon­si­bil­i­ties."

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley greets supporters the PNM meeting in Thick Village, Thursday last night.

Rishi Ragoonath

And he had this mes­sage for the OW­TU, "I want to fur­ther tonight to tell the OW­TU as long as your pro­pos­al is ro­bust, as long your pro­pos­al can with­stand busi­ness scruti­ny, you can count on the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to work along­side you to get the job done."

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the crit­ics, he said the on­ly thing they could vi­su­al­ize for this coun­try is may­hem. How­ev­er, he said his gov­ern­ment can vi­su­al­ize OW­TU lead­er­ship mov­ing from con­crete pave­ments and shout­ing to be­ing in a board­room, tak­ing se­ri­ous de­ci­sions about se­ri­ous in­vest­ments.

He said their mem­bers could al­so be­come se­ri­ous­ly rich.

Ex­plain­ing that the OW­TU doesn't need to have the mon­ey in the bank they just need to find an ap­pro­pri­ate fi­nancer and seek out the req­ui­site skills re­quired, if they don't have it, to run the re­fin­ery.

"So this stu­pid talk about Ro­get cant han­dle the re­fin­ery and OW­TU can't han­dle the re­fin­ery..."

Just Mon­day the Pa­tri­ot­ic Team met with the Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee and put for­ward the ten spe­cif­ic ar­eas of re­quire­ment which they were asked to de­liv­er with­in a month af­ter their bid for the re­fin­ery was ac­cept­ed.

While they await the out­come of this, Row­ley said, "It is in every­body's in­ter­est in this coun­try that they suc­ceed in what they are en­gaged in, whether it Gas­par­il­lo, Mara­bel­la, San Fer­nan­do, Fyz­abad or Scar­bor­ough. It is in our in­ter­est and the gov­ern­ment will do every­thing that is rea­son­able to make them suc­ceed if they are se­ri­ous."

Row­ley re­it­er­at­ed that Petrotrin was not shut down but was re­struc­tured be­cause it was los­ing mon­ey, pro­duc­tion was de­creas­ing and was in too much debt.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley leaves the PNM meeting in Thick Village, Thursday last night.

Rishi Ragoonath