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Wednesday, May 21, 2025

PM willing to sacrifice career over Petrotrin

by

Kevon Felmine
2450 days ago
20180905
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley speaks during last night's meeting on Petrotrin's restructuring in Marabella.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley speaks during last night's meeting on Petrotrin's restructuring in Marabella.

Kristian De Silva

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the in­sults and bash­ing lev­elled at him for the im­pend­ing clo­sure of the Petrotrin Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says he is pre­pared to sac­ri­fice his par­lia­men­tary ca­reer in or­der to save T&T from sink­ing deep­er in­to debt.

Speak­ing at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment meet­ing at the Mara­bel­la Com­mu­ni­ty Fa­cil­i­ty last night, Row­ley said that threats and in­sults were not go­ing to force Gov­ern­ment to change the de­ci­sion to end Petrotrin’s re­fin­ing and mar­ket­ing op­er­a­tions. How­ev­er, he said if the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) or any­one has a bet­ter idea to save the com­pa­ny, Gov­ern­ment was open to dis­cus­sions.

Last night’s meet­ing, in the heart of a com­mu­ni­ty which will be deeply af­fect­ed by the move, was meant to ex­plain Gov­ern­ment’s rea­son­ing for the re­fin­ery clo­sure. Row­ley told those cramped in­to the small au­di­to­ri­um that Petrotrin could have been pre­vi­ous­ly fixed, but past politi­cians failed to take ac­tion be­cause they were afraid of los­ing their par­lia­men­tary po­si­tions.

“I am pre­pared to sac­ri­fice my par­lia­men­tary and my po­lit­i­cal fu­ture do­ing what is right for the chil­dren of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Row­ley told the gath­er­ing.

“And as for those who are call­ing for elec­tions, elec­tions will come and you the caller, you on­ly have one vote. Every­body else has a vote in this coun­try and at that time you (cit­i­zens) will de­ter­mine whether you elect­ed a gov­ern­ment that has the strength of char­ac­ter and the moral for­ti­tude to do what has to be done to give Trinidad and To­ba­go a bet­ter chance.”

The PM said if noth­ing is done at the state-owned oil com­pa­ny the coun­try’s cred­it rat­ing will be down­grad­ed again by in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ing agen­cies, mean­ing the coun­try will face high-in­ter­est rates when bor­row­ing in the fu­ture. In cer­tain cas­es, some banks will not lend to T&T, he said. Gov­ern­ment, the PM said, was do­ing what it had to do in or­der to save the coun­try and on­ly asks T&T to stand with the “sen­si­ble de­ci­sion” they have made. He said all that is be­ing done is con­vert­ing a mon­ey-los­ing com­pa­ny in­to a prof­itable busi­ness.

Cog­nisant of the so­cial im­pact the re­fin­ery shut­down will bring, Row­ley as­sured that no work­er would end up in the “garbage bin,” as they will be sent home with at­trac­tive sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages. He said it is al­so Gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to make Petrotrin land avail­able to them through the Pub­lic Sec­tor Hous­ing Pro­gramme. Tax­pay­ers will al­so pay more so that a spe­cial so­cial sys­tem can be in­tro­duced to ad­dress is­sues with the ter­mi­nat­ed work­ers’ chil­dren. He said those who were mak­ing long shouts of dis­ap­proval were ei­ther labour rep­re­sen­ta­tives, politi­cians or both.

“Every sin­gle one of the voic­es out front op­pos­ing this very sen­si­ble de­ci­sion has a con­nec­tion to a po­lit­i­cal par­ty. The OW­TU has a po­lit­i­cal par­ty, MSJ. Wat­son Duke is a politi­cian in To­ba­go, he is the mi­nor­i­ty leader. Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, she is work­ing in a tomb some­where … She ap­peared like an aber­ra­tion. Then, of course, the Op­po­si­tion leader is a politi­cian,” he said.

“These are the four quar­ters from which this un­rea­son­able op­po­si­tion is com­ing. You will nev­er know when they’re talk­ing like a union or when they’re talk­ing like politi­cians. The PNM is the on­ly po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion that is not con­vict­ed and rep­re­sents all the in­ter­est of all the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Break­ing down the de­ci­sion, he likened the re­fin­ery to an old car which con­stant­ly breaks down. He said the most that can be done is to sell it or leave it to rot. Con­trary to what has been sug­gest­ed, he said he does not know any­one in this coun­try who is in­ter­est­ed in the re­fin­ery, but said if there is one he would have to look care­ful­ly at them be­cause the re­fin­ery isn’t an easy as­set to own. Now that it is be­ing tak­en of­fline, he said Gov­ern­ment now has to look at what op­tions are avail­able to have the as­set work in the favour of cit­i­zens.

“All this stu­pid­ness that the Gov­ern­ment has their friends to give it to and the race talk about one per cent. Every time you hear that one per cent sto­ry it runs against our na­tion­al an­them where every creed and race is sup­posed to find an equal place. It’s race talk.”


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