Yvonne Webb

MP for La Brea Fitzger­ald Jef­frey says the sign­ing of a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween Lake As­phalt Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) and the Chi­nese firm, Bei­jing Ori­en­tal Yuhong Wa­ter­proof­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Co Ltd, is a ray of hope for his con­stituen­cy.Jef­frey said al­though he was not aware of the de­tails of the arrange­ment, he sup­port­ed sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment which the MOU could bring."I heard through the grapevine of a plan to de­lib­er­ate­ly run down Lake As­phalt to fa­cil­i­tate pri­vate ac­qui­si­tion, so this de­vel­op­ment cer­tain­ly lends it­self for some hope for the peo­ple of La Brea," Jef­fer­ey said in a tele­phone in­ter­view on Wednes­day.

At a re­cent sign­ing, LATT CEO Leary Ho­sein said the MOU was a first step in ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween it and the Chi­nese wa­ter­proof­ing com­pa­ny for the pos­si­ble es­tab­lish­ment of a man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in La Brea.At the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, on the eve of the three-day of­fi­cial vis­it by Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping, LATT chair­man Ash­ley Tay­lor said through the part­ner­ship, LATT had been put on a glob­al stage with one of the world's largest wa­ter­proof­ing com­pa­nies.Bei­jing Ori­en­tal Yuhong is in­volved in the re­search, man­u­fac­ture, dis­tri­b­u­tion and tech­nol­o­gy con­sult­ing of new con­struc­tion wa­ter­proof ma­te­ri­als.

Tay­lor said the arrange­ment fit­ted in­to Gov­ern­ment's strat­e­gy of di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my, grow­ing for­eign ex­change earn­ings and spurring em­ploy­ment.Chair­man of the wa­ter­proof­ing com­pa­ny, Li Weiguo, said when the plans for LATT, a whol­ly-owned State en­ter­prise, came on stream it es­ti­mat­ed rev­enue gen­er­a­tion of $1 bil­lion and em­ploy­ment of 1,000 lo­cals.

Com­ment­ing on the prospect, Jef­frey said: "Un­em­ploy­ment is ris­ing in La Brea. A lot of com­pa­nies are cut­ting back and more and more peo­ple are be­com­ing un­em­ployed, not be­cause of a lack of skill but be­cause of a lack of in­vest­ment in the area."From next Mon­day and over a two-week pe­ri­od, I will be em­bark­ing on a mas­sive reg­is­tra­tion of all un­em­ployed per­sons in La Brea, from both ends of the con­stituen­cy."

He said with that data­base, which would in­clude in­di­vid­ual's skills and ed­u­ca­tion­al back­ground, he would be able to ne­go­ti­ate with prospec­tive em­ploy­ers with the aim of sup­ply­ing a com­pe­tent labour force."In oth­er words, my of­fice will be used as an em­ploy­ment agency," he added.Jef­frey al­so point­ed out that a con­sor­tium of lo­cal and Cana­di­an-based com­pa­nies was ex­pect­ed to es­tab­lish a hard­board com­pa­ny in La Brea.He es­ti­mat­ed the con­struc­tion phase of that project would em­ploy at least 3,000 peo­ple.