Na­pari­ma of Par­lia­ment Rod­ney Charles, is call­ing on PM Row­ley to stop "man­u­fac­tur­ing dis­trac­tions" and pro­vide plans to ad­dress grow­ing un­cer­tain­ties in the petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try in light of Wednes­day's an­nounce­ment by Yara Trinidad Ltd to close one of its am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion plants at Point Lisas.

Ac­cord­ing to Charles, the in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ed there are three rea­sons for the de­ci­sion: the un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing gas prices and its avail­abil­i­ty, pre­vail­ing de­pressed am­mo­nia prices, and giv­en its age, the low­er en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy of the am­mo­nia plant.

Charles is al­leg­ing there are sim­i­lar is­sues at oth­er plants across the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, and he is call­ing on ther Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley to re­veal the true state of the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor and pro­vide con­crete plans to res­cue the in­dus­try.

The clo­sure of the plant he said "takes with it five per­cent of the coun­try’s am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion, re­duced gov­ern­ment rev­enues and not in­con­sid­er­able job loss­es."

There are con­cerns that the fu­tures of Trin­gen 1 and Trin­gen 2 are al­so un­cer­tain since they are yet to reach an agree­ment with NGC on gas prices.

Charles said "giv­en his pro­cliv­i­ty for en­gi­neer­ing dis­trac­tions in the run up to Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions Row­ley must state de­ci­sive­ly, what his con­crete plans are to en­sure that cit­i­zen’s jobs are pro­tect­ed and the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate does not be­come a thing of the past like Petrotrin where 5,000 plus jobs were lost; or Arcelor­Mit­tal with 600; or the 2 Methanol plants closed in 2017; all of which oc­curred un­der this clue­less PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion."

He said "the in­creas­ing un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the ma­jor em­ploy­ment sec­tor in T&T on­ly brings fur­ther mis­ery and hard­ships for these work­ers and their fam­i­lies and fence­line com­mu­ni­ties. With yet an­oth­er clo­sure com­ing, cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to lose faith."

Charles is con­tend­ing that more than 55,000 have been re­trenched since the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion took pow­er in 2015, and that the econ­o­my con­tin­ues to suf­fer due to the fail­ures of what he de­scribed as "the in­com­pe­tent and un­car­ing Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion."

And the mem­ber of par­lia­ment for Cou­va South Rudranath In­dars­ingh said the clo­sure of the Yara plant is "dev­as­tat­ing news."

In­dars­ingh said the clo­sure takes with it "five per­cent of the coun­try's am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion and leads to more job loss­es."

He said the coun­try "is wit­ness­ing a lit­er­al dec­i­ma­tion of the en­er­gy sec­tor which con­tin­ues to get worst and YARA’s an­nounce­ment on­ly adds to the grow­ing num­ber of com­pa­nies in the en­er­gy sec­tor that have ei­ther made sig­nif­i­cant cut backs in its op­er­a­tions or have com­plete­ly closed since Sep­tem­ber 2015. These in­clude Petrotrin, Rep­sol, In­dus­tri­al Plant Ser­vices Ltd, Arcelor Mit­tal, CEN­TRIN, Methanol Hold­ings Lim­it­ed."

In­dars­ingh is call­ing on Labour and Small En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus, to tell the coun­try when she was ad­vised of the pend­ing shut­down by YARA and whether or not she at­tempt­ed to have any type of rec­on­cil­ia­to­ry talks with the Com­pa­ny.

In­dars­ingh, the for­mer Pres­i­dent of one of the coun­try’s largest Trade Unions said that from what is be­ing re­port­ed in the lo­cal me­dia, it ap­pears that there was "no at­tempt or ini­tia­tive by the Gov­ern­ment to in­ter­vene in the gas sales ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween NGC and YARA in or­der to pre­serve jobs and the op­er­a­tions of the Com­pa­ny."

He said one is left to won­der whether NGC ad­vised the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Franklin Khan that it was in­volved in sev­er­al ne­go­ti­a­tion ses­sions which failed to reach an agree­ment that could sus­tain the op­er­a­tion of the YARA Plan­tand if so "did the Min­is­ter at­tempt to me­di­ate the is­sues di­rect­ly with YARA?"