Rapheal John-Lall

Two for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ters yes­ter­day com­ment­ed on the loom­ing threat of a strike at Petrotrin, with both Con­rad Enill and Kevin Ram­nar­ine agree­ing that T&T can­not af­ford a strike at this time.

Enill called on all par­ties–the com­pa­ny's board, the gov­ern­ment and the Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU)–to come to an am­i­ca­ble set­tle­ment be­fore union pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get serves a strike no­tice on the state-owned com­pa­ny to­mor­row, while Kevin Ram­nar­ine said that based on state owned Petrotrin's fi­nan­cial po­si­tion they can­not af­ford to give a salary in­creas­es at this time.

Enill, who served as en­er­gy min­is­ter be­tween 2007 and 2010, said the on­ly thing the coun­try would face if Petrotrin shuts down its work­force were neg­a­tives and pain, as cit­i­zens, the pro­tec­tive ser­vices and busi­ness­es would face ma­jor dis­rup­tions and trau­ma.

"I do not be­lieve at this point the coun­try should face that ac­tiv­i­ty giv­en the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges. I think what should oc­cur is that the com­pa­ny should sit with the union and work out the is­sues.

"We can­not con­tin­ue in Trinidad and To­ba­go strik­ing for every­thing. And we can't con­tin­ue at the same time, in not lis­ten­ing to what is tak­ing place.

"We all went to school to learn things. We all should un­der­stand that if the prices of oil and gas have been re­duced dra­mat­i­cal­ly it means we do not have the rev­enues as we had be­fore."

Com­ing out of this is­sue should be a win-win sit­u­a­tion for all, Enill said.

"What­ev­er hap­pens it should be a ne­go­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment with­out putting the peo­ple of the coun­try through pain. It is go­ing to be painful."

Enill said the ones to suf­fer the most would be the poor.

He said be­fore the PNM came in­to of­fice they had a re­la­tion­ship with Ro­get.

"They were able to sit down around a ta­ble and talk about na­tion­al is­sues. That is what is re­quired at this point in time. I think that some­body has to take the coun­try's lead­er­ship and try to re­solve this is­sue in the short­est pos­si­ble time. It can­not be that the on­ly time you will deal with the mat­ter is when you start to hurt peo­ple. That makes no sense."

If this mat­ter is not ad­dressed in a time­ly fash­ion, Enill said the ram­i­fi­ca­tions could be dev­as­tat­ing.

"In the first in­stance this can shut down the coun­try. If peo­ple can't move freely from one place to the oth­er... then you have two things hap­pen­ing, you have the whole trans­porta­tion sub sec­tor not be­ing able trans­port good and ser­vices. It means you are go­ing to have short­ages (of goods) which can trig­ger price in­creas­es. There is a whole se­ries of ac­tiv­i­ties that can oc­cur as re­sult of not be­ing able to move in the coun­try be­cause there is no fu­el."

Enill said in his view all this was "neg­a­tives."

While the Gov­ern­ment had the abil­i­ty to get the army to op­er­ate Petrotrin's re­fin­ery as a con­tin­gency plan, Enill said this was not a good use of re­sources.

"If we have a crime prob­lem in the coun­try then mil­i­tary re­sources should be able to deal with that."

How­ev­er, Enill said if the strike takes place it would be­come a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sue.

"Be­cause you are go­ing to have a sit­u­a­tion in the so­ci­ety where even the mil­i­tary may not be able to be trans­port­ed and go where they need to go....there­fore they are go­ing to have to deal with it as though it is a threat."

Mean­while, Kevin Ram­nar­ine, who served as en­er­gy min­is­ter from 2011 to 2015, said that based on state-owned Petrotrin's fi­nan­cial po­si­tion they can­not af­ford to give a salary in­creas­es at this time.

"I am say­ing that the fi­nan­cial po­si­tion of the com­pa­ny can­not jus­ti­fy an in­crease in wages," he told the Guardian yes­ter­day.

Ram­nar­ine had giv­en sta­tis­tics to show that Petrotrin's rev­enue fell from TT$ 29 bil­lion in 2014 to TT $16 bil­lion in 2016.

This comes at a time where oil pro­duc­tion in T&T has been falling and ene­gry prices glob­al­ly have fall­en to their low­est in decades.

The Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) had giv­en Petrotrin an ul­ti­ma­tum to set­tle ne­go­ti­a­tions with the union or there will be a shuta­d­own of the com­pa­ny.

An­cel Ro­get, OW­TU's Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence last week said that the strike ac­tion would not on­ly be aimed at the com­pa­ny but al­so at the Gov­ern­ment.

Petrotrin has of­fered ze­ro-ze­ro-ze­ro per­cent in­crease to the oil union for the 2011 to 2014 pe­ri­od.

Fitzroy Hare­wood, Pres­i­dent of Petrotrin in a let­ter to em­ploy­ees had said: It al­so goes with­out say­ing that the com­pa­ny's fi­nan­cial loss­es will be greater due to the loss of rev­enue ex­pect­ed dur­ing the pe­ri­od of a strike"

Ram­nar­ine sug­gest­ed that fu­ture wage in­creas­es be tied to per­for­mance.

"They need to link fu­ture in­creas­es in wages to im­prove­ments in per­for­mance of the com­pa­ny mea­sured by in­creased oil pro­duc­tion and in­creased re­fin­ery out­put and ef­fi­cien­cy," he said.

Ram­nar­ine added that if OW­TU and Petrotrin do not come to an agree­ment and they de­cide to take in­dus­tri­al ac­tion there should be "con­tin­gency plans" in place.

"There are es­tab­lished con­tin­gen­cies at Petrotrin, Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP) and Unipet to en­sure the de­liv­ery of fu­el to the coun­try."