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Thursday, July 10, 2025

PM to address nation tonight

by

20170110

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is due to ad­dress the na­tion tonight at eight o'clock, and sources close to the Gov­ern­ment con­firm that the main fo­cus of the ad­dress will be on the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cli­mate with spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to the agree­ment ar­rived at with the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union to avert a strike at the State-owned oil and gas com­pa­ny Petrotrin.

On Mon­day, fol­low­ing a marathon 30-hour meet­ing in­volv­ing the union and the com­pa­ny with Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus and a team from her min­istry, an agree­ment was ham­mered out to avert the strike. The set­tle­ment was for five per cent, three per cent for the first year and two per cent for the sec­ond year.

The re­main­der of the ne­go­ti­a­tion for the bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od is to be de­cid­ed at the In­dus­tri­al Court.

The five per cent agree­ment ac­cord­ing to Petrotrin pres­i­dent Fitzroy Hare­wood would cost the com­pa­ny $80 mil­lion while Hare­wood ad­mit­ted that it was less than the com­pa­ny an­tic­i­pat­ed, there is still a con­cern that it is more than the coun­try far less the com­pa­ny could af­ford. The new salary struc­ture is to be paid "im­me­di­ate­ly at the next pay­roll cy­cle."

Con­cil­i­a­tion for the re­main­der of the ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­od would con­tin­ue at the In­dus­tri­al Court to be com­plet­ed on or be­fore Feb­ru­ary 28.

Gov­ern­ment sources told the T&T Guardian there is a con­cern that when that set­tle­ment is ar­rived at it would fur­ther push up costs at the al­ready fi­nan­cial­ly strapped state oil com­pa­ny.

But there is al­so a con­cern about the cost of the back-pay for the work­ers which it is feared would cost the com­pa­ny tens of mil­lions of dol­lars. The Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment signed by the Com­pa­ny and the Union on Mon­day states that back pay will be paid over a mu­tu­al­ly agreed pe­ri­od and will be based on agreed pro­duc­tion and per­for­mance trig­gers to be de­ter­mined and agreed up­on.

Gov­ern­ment, a spokesman said, vir­tu­al­ly had its back against the wall to set­tle the ne­go­ti­a­tion in the face of the pro­posed strike which would have crip­pled the coun­try. For two rea­sons: one is that the In­ter­na­tion­al rat­ing agency Moody's will be in the coun­try in the next few weeks and it would have been bad to have the coun­try's ma­jor state en­ter­prise on a strike. "It could have meant an­oth­er down­grade for Petrotrin," we were told. In May this year Moody's down­grad­ed Petrotrin's rat­ing from Ba1- to Ba3.

The oth­er rea­son is that Gov­ern­ment had lit­tle room to bar­gain since the OW­TU led by An­cel Ro­get was play­ing hard ball, in­sist­ing that the com­pa­ny set­tle or face a strike.

The union al­so put for­ward a num­ber of sug­ges­tions to make the com­pa­ny vi­able, in­sist­ing that Petrotrin was be­ing bad­ly run and it was too "top heavy." The union has al­so sug­gest­ed that gov­ern­ment should con­duct a foren­sic au­dit of the com­pa­ny for the pe­ri­od 2010-2015.

It blamed the man­age­ment for the state of the com­pa­ny and while there has been spec­u­la­tion that there would be a shake-up at the com­pa­ny, but sources say it is "hard­ly like­ly' that the Prime Min­is­ter would ad­dress that is­sue.

What the Prime Min­is­ter would be do­ing, a source said, will be "lay­ing the cards on the ta­ble," this ne­go­ti­a­tion and the strike which would have em­anat­ed from it ac­cord­ing to sources was not of the mak­ing of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion but came about be­cause of the for­mer Peo­ples Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment which had a ze­ro of­fer on the ta­ble even though the fi­nan­cial for­tunes of the coun­try at the time when the ne­go­ti­a­tion be­gan was bet­ter than it is now.

The Gov­ern­ment, a source said, is of the view that the for­mer gov­ern­ment act­ed in a "vin­dic­tive" man­ner to­wards the OW­TU which had been rais­ing con­cerns about is­sues of cor­rup­tion and the re­la­tion­ship which the then gov­ern­ment had with the labour af­fil­i­at­ed Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice was bro­ken.

The Prime Min­is­ter is al­so ex­pect­ed to ad­dress the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try.

Asked about the crime is­sue, Gov­ern­ment sources con­firm that while there is na­tion­al con­cern about crime and the ef­forts be­ing made to ad­dress the prob­lem, the Prime Min­is­ter had spo­ken to the is­sue fol­low­ing the Cab­i­net re­treat. He not­ed then that the coun­try's best re­sponse to the crim­i­nal el­e­ment is to have a well-or­gan­ised and well-equipped po­lice ser­vice. Dr Row­ley iden­ti­fied one of the ma­jor fail­ings of the po­lice ser­vice as the in­abil­i­ty to get on top of crime, which he said was re­flect­ed in low rates of de­tec­tion and lack of crime sup­pres­sion.

Row­ley an­nounced the ap­point­ment of a com­mit­tee of eight in­di­vid­u­als head­ed by Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran to con­duct a man­pow­er au­dit of the Po­lice Ser­vice. The com­mit­tee is ex­pect­ed to re­port on its find­ings on March 31st.


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