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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Citizens support Industrial Court—MFO poll

by

Suzanne Sheppard
2439 days ago
20181116

Al­though there have been calls from cer­tain quar­ters for the In­dus­tri­al Court to be re­struc­tured or re­moved, the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple asked about the is­sue in a re­cent Mar­ket Facts and Opin­ions (MFO) sur­vey do not share those views.

A clear ma­jor­i­ty—53 per cent—agreed that there is a need for the In­dus­tri­al Court, while on­ly 29 per cent dis­agreed. They were polled on the is­sue when the In­dus­tri­al Court grant­ed an in­junc­tion to the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) against Petrotrin and again when it was over­turned by the Court of Ap­peal.

A break­down of the MFO da­ta showed that 16 per cent of the re­spon­dents strong­ly agreed on the need for the In­dus­tri­al Court, ten per cent strong­ly dis­agreed and 18 per cent were neu­tral on the is­sue.

These were among find­ings of an in­de­pen­dent sur­vey done by MFO to gauge pub­lic opin­ion on the Petrotrin is­sue which has been dom­i­nat­ing ma­jor news since late Au­gust when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced plans to wind up the op­er­a­tions of the re­fin­ery and send home all of the em­ploy­ees of the State-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny.

The sur­vey showed that as a trend­ing sto­ry, the Petrotrin is­sue gen­er­at­ed great in­ter­est in south Trinidad. To­ba­go was un­con­cerned and, with the ex­cep­tion of Port-of-Spain, there was less in­ter­est along the East-West Cor­ri­dor.

Among the key find­ings were that 64 per cent of re­spon­dents felt the re­fin­ery should not be closed. A sig­nif­i­cant­ly small pro­por­tion—23 per cent—felt it should not be shut down and one in ten peo­ple were un­sure of what was the best de­ci­sion.

The MFO re­port stat­ed: “Per­sons who felt that the re­fin­ery should be closed, tend­ed to ex­press a sense of op­ti­mism about the coun­try and to be of high so­cioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus. They were more like­ly to be old­er (55-64 years), of African or mixed eth­nic­i­ty and re­side in re­gions less im­pact­ed by the de­ci­sion to be made—To­ba­go and the East-West Cor­ri­dor.

“Those who felt that the re­fin­ery should not be closed were less op­ti­mistic about the fu­ture and are young (in the 25-44 years age group, male, and of East In­di­an eth­nic­i­ty. As may be ex­pect­ed, those per­sons large­ly resided in com­mu­ni­ties most af­fect­ed by the Petrotrin pend­ing clo­sure—that is, South Cen­tral, South West and Cen­tral com­mu­ni­ties.”

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly three in five of the re­spon­dents—57 per cent—dis­agreed with the view that the coun­try would be bet­ter off with­out the Petrotrin re­fin­ery.


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