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.