Dear Sirs,

I write as a con­cerned cit­i­zen and for­mer em­ploy­ee of Petrotrin re­gard­ing the de­ci­sion to close the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

I am sure that this de­ci­sion was not an easy one for ei­ther the Board of Petrotrin or for the Gov­ern­ment and that it was tak­en in the be­lief that it would be bet­ter in the long run for the coun­try.

I can­not help but won­der though, whether, in ar­riv­ing at the de­ci­sion, due con­sid­er­a­tion was giv­en to the wider so­cio-eco­nom­ic is­sues be­yond the com­pa­ny’s bot­tom line, and the fu­ture growth and de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly for our young peo­ple.

While we have had clo­sures be­fore in oth­er in­dus­tries, the sheer mag­ni­tude of the re­fin­ery shut­down in terms of so­cio-eco­nom­ic fall­out is mind-bog­gling since vir­tu­al­ly every busi­ness—small, medi­um, and large through­out the Cen­tral and South in par­tic­u­lar—will be dras­ti­cal­ly af­fect­ed. This will trick­le down to vir­tu­al­ly every per­son even­tu­al­ly through­out the coun­try with hor­rif­ic health and so­cial im­pli­ca­tions.

But bad as that is, there is an­oth­er crit­i­cal fall­out which I be­lieve no one has con­sid­ered: the role of the re­fin­ery in tech­ni­cal man­pow­er de­vel­op­ment in T&T.

Sim­ply put: clos­ing the re­fin­ery will re­move the top-lev­el tech­ni­cal jobs avail­able to our peo­ple, but worse, it will re­move the op­por­tu­ni­ty for young peo­ple to de­vel­op world-class, glob­al­ly in-de­mand tech­ni­cal skills. Do we re­al­ly want such a lim­it­ed fu­ture for our youth?

Over the last 100 years, T&T has de­vel­oped a glob­al rep­u­ta­tion for high­ly skilled work­ers in every as­pect of the en­er­gy busi­ness. There is no coun­try in the world in­volved in the pe­tro­le­um busi­ness that has not/does not tap in­to our tech­ni­cal man­pow­er base and this in­cludes op­er­a­tors, ser­vice providers, and con­struc­tion con­trac­tors. Whilst at MIC, I was present in a meet­ing with Kel­log, Brown & Root (KBR), one of the world’s largest con­struc­tion firms, who told us that one of the first things they do when they land a ma­jor con­tract is to vis­it Trinidad to source their skilled work­ers.

Not long ago, the sec­ond largest con­struc­tion firm in In­dia came to Trinidad to seek part­ner­ships with lo­cal ser­vice providers to ac­cess our skills af­ter land­ing a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar con­tract in Ghana. All the oil pro­duc­ing na­tions of Africa have vis­it­ed T&T no less than three times each over the last 15 years to learn from us.

'The re­fin­ery—the pri­ma­ry on-the-job train­ing ground'

Since the mid-1940s, the train­ing which the oil in­dus­try has pro­vid­ed has been main­ly re­spon­si­ble for the de­vel­op­ment of that skills rep­u­ta­tion. Oth­ers have al­so con­tributed (eg, Ca­roni, T&TEC) but for sheer scope, depth, and breadth of train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties the oil in­dus­try kept us at the fore­front in terms of num­bers trained lev­el of tech­nol­o­gy, and scope of dis­ci­plines. And, among the oil com­pa­nies, the re­fin­ery it­self would have stood out above all else be­cause of the ex­tent of equip­ment and process­es in­volved.

It is im­por­tant to know, Sirs, that, al­though the in­dus­try it­self will still be here with or with­out the re­fin­ery, the train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties will dis­ap­pear since the up­stream multi­na­tion­als (BP, BG, Rep­sol, BHP Bil­li­ton etc) do not par­tic­i­pate in any mean­ing­ful way in pro­vid­ing trainees with the on-the-job train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.

It is al­so use­ful to note the same ap­plies to all the plants in Point Lisas who do vir­tu­al­ly no on-the-job train­ing. Giv­en their rel­a­tive­ly small em­ploy­ee base (300-400 per plant) they view the set­ting up of train­ing fa­cil­i­ties and or­gan­i­sa­tion struc­ture re­quired as not eco­nom­i­cal­ly fea­si­ble.

It is note­wor­thy that the re­fin­ery at Pointe-a-Pierre in terms of size and num­ber of plants, and man­pow­er, is the equiv­a­lent of vir­tu­al­ly all the plants in Point Lisas put to­geth­er.

With­out the on-the-job ex­po­sure, the train­ing is large­ly in­com­plete as com­pe­ten­cies can­not be ful­ly at­tained in class­rooms and labs. To de­vel­op a com­pe­tent work­er re­quires both in­sti­tu­tion­al learn­ing and in­dus­try learn­ing. With­out ei­ther, train­ing will be in­com­plete.

In 1982, Tex­a­co closed all its train­ing schemes, cut­ting off the most sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal man­pow­er sup­ply to the in­dus­try, and in­deed, to the coun­try. By 1995, when the hu­man re­source cap­i­tal built up over the pre­vi­ous decades was ex­haust­ed, the lead­ers in the petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try will well re­mem­ber the fight to se­cure high­ly skilled work­ers to fa­cil­i­tate the rapid ex­pan­sion. Poach­ing was the or­der of the day and was re­spon­si­ble in large mea­sure for the rapid rise in wages and salaries in the sec­tor.

De­spite the in­ter­ven­tion of the var­i­ous gov­ern­ments since 1995 to fill the train­ing gap left by Tex­a­co, et al, through the es­tab­lish­ment of ex­cel­lent train­ing fa­cil­i­ties and pro­grammes (MIC-NS­DP, NESC, TTIT, UTT) cost­ing in the bil­lions, the ab­sence of mean­ing­ful on-the-job train­ing where the com­pe­ten­cies are re­al­ly de­vel­oped has meant that the ob­jec­tive of pro­duc­ing ready-to-work out­puts of the high­est cal­i­bre has not been ful­ly re­alised.

The re­fin­ery—as the pri­ma­ry on-the-job train­ing ground for T&T’s skilled tech­ni­cal ex­perts—is crit­i­cal for keep­ing our man­pow­er at the fore­front of tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.

'Hon­est, open, mean­ing­ful di­a­logue need­ed among stake­hold­ers'

All will know that an ap­pren­tice­ship cer­tifi­cate from Tex­a­co, and lat­er from its suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies was a pass­port to any de­vel­oped coun­try. Shut­ting down the re­fin­ery will re­move this crit­i­cal com­po­nent from our abil­i­ty to pro­duce high­ly skilled Crafts­men, Tech­ni­cians, Tech­nol­o­gists, and En­gi­neers and, by ex­ten­sion, re­duce dras­ti­cal­ly the op­por­tu­ni­ties for high skills de­vel­op­ment and main­tain­ing that pride of place we have/had in the glob­al vil­lage.

Two years ago, a close friend vis­it­ed Aru­ba on hol­i­day and re­marked quite ca­su­al­ly to a taxi dri­ver that he did not see many young peo­ple around. The dri­ver replied that, since the clo­sure and re­moval of the re­finer­ies, there have been very lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for the youth, who could on­ly look for­ward to dri­ving taxis, man­ning a ta­ble at the casi­nos 1or be­com­ing store clerks. The high­er or­der jobs had dis­ap­peared.

With the ab­sence of the re­fin­ery, it is not dif­fi­cult to project the youth of T&T be­ing in the same po­si­tion in 20 years—not a pret­ty pic­ture at all.

The clo­sure of the re­fin­ery fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Ca­roni and the in­abil­i­ty to make the co­coa/cof­fee in­dus­try in­to a ma­jor man­u­fac­tur­ing ac­tiv­i­ty means, in ef­fect, we have been slow­ly re­mov­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ties for the high­er pro­file jobs. We are squan­der­ing the ad­van­tages we were so gen­er­ous­ly be­stowed.

Mr Prime Min­is­ter, the Board of any busi­ness must put the bot­tom line ahead of every­thing else to en­sure the sur­vival of the busi­ness. A gov­ern­ment, on the oth­er hand, must be con­cerned about where the coun­try will be in the fu­ture and es­pe­cial­ly what op­por­tu­ni­ties will ex­ist for its peo­ple and, in par­tic­u­lar, its youth.

Sirs, the fall­out from the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery is sim­ply too hor­rif­ic to com­pre­hend and re­quires yet an­oth­er hon­est, open, and mean­ing­ful di­a­logue among all the stake­hold­ers to find a bet­ter al­ter­na­tive.

I join with the tens of thou­sands of peo­ple who will be af­fect­ed in be­seech­ing you to think again be­fore im­ple­ment­ing this ex­treme de­ci­sion.

Har­ris Khan,

Petrotrin re­tiree who was re­spon­si­ble for train­ing at Tex­a­co/Trin­toc/Petrotrin, and at the ex­ec­u­tive lev­el in the es­tab­lish­ment of all of the ma­jor train­ing ini­tia­tives in T&T over the last 25 years (MIC/NS­DP, NESC, TTIT, UTT).