Fi­nance Min­istry Colm Im­bert will be lift­ing the tax-free lim­it for re­trenched Petrotrin work­ers from $300,000 to $500,000, leav­ing more cash in work­ers’ hands.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he di­rect­ed Im­bert to lift the tax-free lim­it “to help them get over this hur­dle.” He made the an­nounce­ment in his ad­dress at the rul­ing PNM’s an­nu­al con­ven­tion at Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Cen­tre in To­ba­go on Sun­day.

This lat­est fol­lows the re­cent clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery and re­struc­tur­ing of the state-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny. New com­pa­nies will be­gin op­er­at­ing from De­cem­ber 1.

Petrotrin had 3,500 per­ma­nent work­ers and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,500 tem­po­rary work­ers.

Last week Im­bert told Par­lia­ment the pay­out for work­ers on av­er­age was in ex­cess of $500,000 per em­ploy­ee. He said some were get­ting $2 mil­lion. He said the con­cept of “av­er­age” was at least half of work­ers, not a few.

Im­bert made the point dur­ing de­bate on Petrotrin when Op­po­si­tion mem­bers sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on work­ers’ pay­ments and queried the “en­hanced pack­ages” En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan had said would be made. The Op­po­si­tion ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of “pau­peris­ing” work­ers. UNC whip David Lee, say­ing Gov­ern­ment was “heart­less,” added that the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion wasn’t con­sid­er­ing that work­ers were los­ing jobs a month be­fore Christ­mas and had oblig­a­tions to meet. Lee, who said work­ers were cry­ing and de­pressed, asked the state to “hold its hand” and re­think its Petrotrin plan.

Yes­ter­day Row­ley, who re­count­ed the need to close the re­fin­ery and the cri­sis com­pa­ny’s loss­es had posed to T&T, said sev­er­al pack­ages had been an­nounced for work­ers in an over­all pack­age of more than $2.6 bil­lion. He said work­ers al­so “have to their ben­e­fit” an $11 bil­lion pen­sion fund.

Row­ley said in­creas­ing the tax-free lim­it from $300,000 to $500,000 would cost the state an ad­di­tion­al $150 mil­lion but put “$50,000 more in the hands of the af­fect­ed fam­i­lies.”

“If you lis­ten to those with oth­er con­ver­sa­tions and oth­er agen­das, you’ll be­lieve we were push­ing them over a cliff and turn­ing our backs on them,” he said.

Row­ley al­so said Gov­ern­ment was ‘tak­ing care to soft­en the stress” on work­ers, their fam­i­lies and Petrotrin fence­line com­mu­ni­ties by con­cen­trat­ing de­vel­op­ment in the south-west penin­su­la from San Fer­nan­do Point Fortin.

Com­ment­ing on Petrotrin’s loss-mak­ing sit­u­a­tion, he said: “We’re find­ing our way back to pros­per­i­ty and we’re see­ing the light.”

He added T&T had sold its first tanker of lo­cal crude oil and was paid in “hard cur­ren­cy”, so the coun­try is now re­stored to the “fa­mil­iar po­si­tion of the high­er the oil price, the bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go’s for­tunes.”

Row­ley said loss­es at the re­fin­ery had stopped and the en­ti­ty was now a stand-alone com­pa­ny that was open for pro­pos­als. T&T al­so im­port­ed and dis­trib­uted its first batch of im­port­ed fu­el, he said, adding: “Our goal is a com­plete turn­around, which has be­gun,”

Row­ley said Petrotrin’s loss­es had threat­ened the coun­try’s sov­er­eign­ty as well as its econ­o­my in a sit­u­a­tion that was tak­ing the coun­try “straight to the in­ter­na­tion­al down­grade of junk bond sta­tus.”

He said: “It had to be re­struc­tured for the ben­e­fit of all the peo­ple,”

Some at the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery had al­lowed the sit­u­a­tion to re­main “in the red” for fear of los­ing their posts even if it meant hurt­ing TT in the process, the Prime Min­is­ter said. He claimed that the past PP ad­min­is­tra­tion failed to act on the mat­ter out of fear, which al­so caused them to “hide five years of loss­es on Petrotrin’s books.”

Com­ment­ing on gas sec­tor for­tunes, Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment has been in “frank talks” with its gas sec­tor part­ners.

“In the same was they ap­proach us when their cir­cum­stances change and we give them con­ces­sions, we’ve been good to them and we ex­pect our part­ners will be good al­so,” he said

He said he was pleased to re­port that all T&T’s part­ners had agreed to dis­cuss im­prov­ing cur­rent terms to bring them in align­ment with “a fair­er slice of the eco­nom­ic pie.”

“Those talks are about to be con­clud­ed and we’ll re­port to you as soon as the con­clu­sion is avail­able to us,” Row­ley said.