Some por­tions of Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery will be sold and oth­er parts will be ab­sorbed in­to the new struc­ture.

Petrotrin chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet yes­ter­day con­firmed that once the re­fin­ery is com­plete­ly shut down at the end of the year, some of the struc­ture could be dis­man­tled and of­fered for sale.

“Some of the ex­ist­ing struc­ture will be ab­sorbed and used by the on­go­ing op­er­a­tions and some will be sold to com­pa­nies that re­quire those as­sets,” Es­pinet said in a short in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian af­ter a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Es­pinet and three mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive—Nigel Ed­wards, Lisa Ali and Reynold Ajod­has­ingh —held the con­fer­ence to clar­i­fy much of the in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main.

Es­pinet field­ed ques­tions from the me­dia for al­most an hour but re­hashed most of what has al­ready been dis­sem­i­nat­ed since it was an­nounced that the re­fin­ery would be shut down. He grew ag­i­tat­ed when the me­dia seemed to fo­cus on the to­tal num­ber of peo­ple who will lose their jobs.

“This is the last time I’ll an­swer a num­bers ques­tion,” Es­pinet said.

He was re­fer­ring to the chang­ing fig­ures of peo­ple af­fect­ed by the shut­down of the re­fin­ery. Since the shut­down was an­nounced, Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union boss An­cel Ro­get has main­tained that all 3,400 work­ers would be sent home, but that fig­ure changed in the re­port­ing as var­i­ous peo­ple com­ment­ed on the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery. On Mon­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan said the fig­ure was close to 4,600.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Es­pinet said Gov­ern­ment would get its in­for­ma­tion from the board, so Khan’s fig­ure was ac­cu­rate.

“I want to say to all of the me­dia this is the last ques­tion I’ll be an­swer­ing about the num­ber of em­ploy­ees. The num­ber thing has been play­ing (in the me­dia)...at the union meet­ing we made it abun­dant­ly clear that the in­ten­tion was al­ways to send every­one home,” Es­pinet said.

He ad­mit­ted there was lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion com­ing out of Petrotrin, con­trast­ed by the del­uge of in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main.

“We have to be mind­ful of the sen­si­tiv­i­ties of cer­tain things and how that might work with our var­i­ous stake­hold­ers,” he said.

One of the more alarm­ing rev­e­la­tions Es­pinet made was that the num­ber of ca­su­al and tem­po­rary work­ers could change with every shift.

He said it was near­ly im­pos­si­ble to give an ac­cu­rate num­ber of ca­su­al work­ers un­til the salaries were be­ing pre­pared, adding there was a pool of ca­su­al work­ers who could be added to a work shift with­out any no­ti­fi­ca­tion to man­age­ment. He said it was al­lowed to hap­pen be­cause of strong work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion and by suc­ces­sive com­plic­it gov­ern­ments.

“If you ask me to­day how many em­ploy­ees we have in Petrotrin I couldn’t tell you, be­cause that is a num­ber that keeps mov­ing in the tem­po­rary work­force on a dai­ly ba­sis,” he said.

“What is it that I am not say­ing that I should be say­ing?”

How­ev­er, Es­pinet al­so said he did not have the “au­thor­i­ty or the am­bi­tion” to cor­rect in­for­ma­tion com­ing from the Gov­ern­ment.

“Would you feel com­fort­able if I take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, which I do. The num­ber which has been stat­ed wrong­ly by any­one I take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for that,” he said.

At the end of Au­gust 2018, Petrotrin’s full-time staff stood at 3,400 and there were 1,417 ca­su­al work­ers on the ros­ter.