Gov­ern­ment is mon­i­tor­ing the com­plete re­moval of the fu­el sub­sidy very care­ful­ly since go­ing to mar­ket-dri­ven prices—which change al­most dai­ly in the US— can cause “great ag­gra­va­tion” to the pub­lic, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan has said.

He made the point in the Sen­ate on Tues­day even as French cit­i­zens ri­ot over an in­crease in fu­el prices, forc­ing the gov­ern­ment there to re­verse its de­ci­sion.

The Min­is­ter com­ments were in stark con­trast to that of Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert who joked at IMF con­fer­ence in 2016, say­ing: “I in­creased the price of fu­el by 15 per cent and then re­alised that was not enough. I came back again in April and raised it by an­oth­er 15 per cent and I came back again just a few weeks ago and raised it by an­oth­er 15 per cent. They haven’t ri­ot­ed yet.”

Im­bert lat­er apol­o­gised for his of­fen­sive state­ment in Par­lia­ment. The sub­sidy on diesel and su­per fu­el was de­creased again in this year’s bud­get, push­ing up the price at the pump.

It re­sult­ed in the hike of taxi fares and in­creased the cost of liv­ing for cit­i­zens.

Khan not­ed yes­ter­day that while Gov­ern­ment said in the last Bud­get that it in­tend­ed to phase out the sub­sidy, it would be phased out. While the in­tent re­mains the same, he not­ed there are “con­se­quences” to this, of which Gov­ern­ment is very cog­nisant.

“We have ul­ti­mate­ly to go to a mar­ket-dri­ven price where prices are post­ed every month, like Ja­maica. In the US, the prices al­so vir­tu­al­ly change dai­ly at the ser­vice sta­tion. With fluc­tu­at­ing oil prices, that’s a cum­ber­some sys­tem to man­age and can cause great ag­gra­va­tion to the pub­lic, when you get up every month ex­pect­ing to see an in­crease in prices.

“Con­verse­ly, there could al­so be a dip in prices—it’s a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion we’re in.”

“We’ve re­moved most of the sub­sidy, but with a US$65 oil price fore­cast, the sub­sidy’s gone back up and we’re mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion, very, very close­ly.”

OW­TU: Apol­o­gise to tem­po­rary Petrotrin work­ers

Mean­while, the OW­TU blazed “fire” yes­ter­day on Khan for his ex­pla­na­tions in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day about tem­po­rary work­ers re­ceiv­ing gra­tu­ity at the end of every work­ing cy­cle and that Petrotrin had no oblig­a­tion, to such work­ers.

OW­TU stat­ed,”What ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened in Petrotrin is that all tem­po­rary work­ers on­ly re­ceive a gra­tu­ity pay­ment when they worked for a pe­ri­od of twelve weeks or more. To avoid pay­ing this gra­tu­ity, the com­pa­ny en­gaged in ro­tat­ing tem­po­rary em­ploy­ees to en­sure they didn’t ex­ceed 11 weeks of con­sec­u­tive work and as such, al­most all tem­po­rary em­ploy­ees worked for years with­out ever re­ceiv­ing a gra­tu­ity pay­ment.”

“If the En­er­gy Min­is­ter is un­aware of this, then an im­me­di­ate apol­o­gy is re­quired and the plight of all tem­po­rary work­ers must im­me­di­ate­ly be ad­dressed.”

OW­TU al­so con­demned Khan’s state­ment that tem­po­rary work­ers can find em­ploy­ment in ser­vice com­pa­nies.

“The same min­is­ter worked hard re­cent­ly spread­ing pro­pa­gan­da against work­ers which has now put every Petrotrin work­er in a po­si­tion where com­pa­nies are re­ject­ing their ap­pli­ca­tions. Gov­ern­ment tar­nished the work­ers’ im­age, the on­ly com­pa­nies hir­ing Petrotrin work­ers are the same con­trac­tors com­ing to re­place Petrotrin work­ers and at rates that are less than half of what they earned be­fore,” a state­ment said.