Petrotrin is in trouble. That is clear. Petrotrin is in trouble not because of any action by the workers. It is in trouble because of bad business decisions made by executive management. This has led to the organisation being in deficit to the tune of billions of dollars.To disguise the failings of the management, and other people, the expression "collapse in the gross refinery margin" has been invented.
You can be sure that no worker was involved in the decisions that led to this situation and the fantastic sums that constitute the company's debt. But no senior management official is being held accountable, not even the people who have overseen this crisis in the industry.As always, efforts are made to place the blame on the workers in this situation and, on top of it all, they are being asked to be responsible by not taking industrial action because that could lead to the demise of the company.
What it won't lead to is action against the real culprits who should be held accountable for the problem in the first place. The spectre of the company collapsing has been posited as justification for the workers accepting the wastefulness and incompetence of the management, established over several years, and overseeing the descent from multi-billion-dollar profits of just a few years ago to hundred of millions of dollars in losses this year.
But this very government continues to subsidise CAL to the tune of hundreds of millions each year (the exact amount is disguised by the misnomer "fuel subsidy") because of its alleged importance to the country. And they bailed out a private company, Clico, at a cost of untold billions to date with little prospect of full recovery of the capital outlay, not to mention interest payments–again because of its alleged (by the government) importance to the nation's economy.
Are we saying that Petrotrin is any less important to the economy? Will the state allow Petrotrin to fail? We all know the answer to this question. That is scaremongering and nothing else.The workers have a right to demand their just due because there is no evidence whatever that the ones who brought the company to financial ruin will ever be called to answer.
Karan Mahabirsingh
Carapichaima