RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

For­mer prime min­is­ter and for­mer en­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has fired back at Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get, ac­cus­ing him of in­grat­i­tude and mis­lead­ing work­ers, as a war of words es­ca­lates over the Gov­ern­ment’s en­er­gy agen­da.

In a so­cial me­dia video yes­ter­day, Young dis­missed Ro­get’s crit­i­cism with what he de­scribed as “great, great amuse­ment,” be­fore tak­ing di­rect aim at the vet­er­an trade union­ist.

“I want to ask him… when he told BP, ‘take your rig and go,’ how many work­ers lost out on op­por­tu­ni­ties? How many years it took us to get back the rig build­ing work for Trinidad and To­ba­go?” Young asked.

He went fur­ther, warn­ing cit­i­zens not to fol­low Ro­get. “Don’t fol­low him, you know, be­cause he’s done noth­ing, noth­ing for the move­ment… how many more peo­ple are you go­ing to lead astray?”

Young ref­er­enced a past Petrotrin dis­pute, adding: “In 2014, when Aun­tie Kam­la want­ed to fire you… Who was your lawyer, and who saved you? In­grat­i­tude is worse than witch­craft.”

Young’s com­ments came just one day af­ter Ro­get is­sued a fiery warn­ing to the for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter dur­ing May Day cel­e­bra­tions in San Fer­nan­do, telling Young and the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment to stay out of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment’s af­fairs.

“Leave the Gov­ern­ment alone to con­duct the busi­ness in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Do not un­der­mine this Gov­ern­ment,” Ro­get de­clared.

He ac­cused Young of pur­su­ing po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions while at­tempt­ing to desta­bilise the ad­min­is­tra­tion by un­der­min­ing PNM po­lit­i­cal leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les.

“Every sin­gle day, his ef­fort is to try to up­start his po­lit­i­cal leader… but in­so­far as un­der­min­ing the coun­try… we will have a lot to say.”

Last month, Young post­ed a pic­ture of him with act­ing Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez with the hash­tag “per­son­agra­ta.” En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal chid­ed Young for the meet­ing, ac­cus­ing him of try­ing to un­der­mine the Gov­ern­ment.

On Fri­day, Ro­get al­so warned of di­rect ac­tion. “We are pre­pared to mount a phys­i­cal cam­paign on the road against him and any­one who tries to un­der­mine it.”

De­fend­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to restart the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, Ro­get said the move could gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant em­ploy­ment.

The clash comes against the back­drop of re­newed ef­forts by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Mooni­lal to re-en­gage Venezuela on en­er­gy mat­ters. Last month, the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced plans to send a del­e­ga­tion to Cara­cas to se­cure T&T’s share of oil and gas re­sources, part­ly owned by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC).

T&T and Venezuela have strained diplo­mat­ic ties as Venezuela pre­vi­ous­ly de­clared Per­sad-Bisses­sar “per­sona non gra­ta,” ac­cus­ing her of align­ing with for­eign mil­i­tary in­ter­ests against Cara­cas.