Wayne Kublalsingh
Do the Governments which we have put in charge of our business understand our business?
SUPER TAX
The Government, in its 2019 budget, made an instant proclamation on super gas. $1 more per litre on super gas. This is how it was put: "per litre". "Well", said many in the Republic, "just one dollar more, that can’t be too bad". But they had not calculated properly. The Government had done all the calculation. If your gas tank has a capacity of 60 litres, then it takes $60 dollars more to fill your tank. For those who use super, this is a 25 per cent increase in their gas budgets; we have jumped from $3.58 to $3.97 to $4.97 in quick budgetary time. Of course, it is not the ordinary citizens, the ultimate stakeholders in our oil economy, who bust this economy. Government’s bad Petrotrin projects are the failure to manage, its injection of party hacks into corporate boardrooms. They have busted this business.
PETROTRIN
In January 2018, a collaborative restructuring process for Petrotrin was put in train. Reports had been commissioned. All the reports, the union, the board agreed that deep and meaningful restructuring was required. On April 3, 2018, a Memorandum of Agreement was signed between the majority Petrotrin workers union, the OWTU, and the Petrotrin Board committing to a timeline of restructuring. Within two weeks of the agreement, which carried the weight of law, having been taken to the state registry and stamped, a technical group met with the Board of Petrotrin. A panic button, melodramatic and moralising, still raging in our Republic, was pushed.
An option was chosen, arising from discussions between the board and the technical group, to abort the restructuring process, "shut" down the refinery, send home all the workers, focus on exploration and drilling rather than refining and marketing of processed fuels products, and run the company according to "international benchmarks". This option was taken to the Cabinet which approved it. The Industrial Court was now saddled with the onerous task of determining whether the board (Prime Minister, Cabinet, State) had a legal responsibility to afford the OWTU, armed with an MOA, an opportunity to participate in this critical, far-reaching decision option. Of course, the State lost; and now, rather than honourably, sensibly, sitting down and talking with the OWTU, has appealed.
One question is, did it have to reach this far? Now, if there is a Panadol shortage at the POS General it is the OWTU’s and Petrotrin’s fault. The nation is being called on to bash workers, union, and the company using selective or false information. Rancour, stealth, demonisation, and arbitrariness to the hilt. Will not all current and future litigation costs have to be borne by the people? Will not sterner and sterner versions of property tax have to be invented to reimburse these costly mishaps, blunders, and apparent derelictions? Is this how to run the business of the people, lands, and communities of T&T?
TAR SANDS
The Government is now requesting proposals for the mining of tar sands in south Trinidad. Has the Government studied the economies of scale of this option? Extracting oil from sand and tar is costly, and requires optimal finds and scale to be lucrative. We are not Canada. Has the State done stringent studies of the social, ecological, and financial costs? Of strip mining? Control and disposal of significant volumes tar-based effluents? And finally, why are we going back there? Has the Government not taken enough licks on smelters? Incurring astronomical wasted costs? And politically, does the Government have a political death wish? Petrotrin. Ten low and middle-income high rises on the St Joseph Government Farm. Tar sands.
This Republic needs a Government to conduct our business well and rationally. Humankind is nearing the upsurge and swing of a protonic and photonic revolution. Protons and electrons are being loaded onto miniature and wafered chips; tiny particles, minuscule traces of energy are now being harnessed to conduct the most complex and arduous labours and tasks; to provide communications, information, intelligence, remote control. More and more photons are being loaded onto solar panels, cells; to provide electricity, food, water, transportation. If our governments are not thinking, planning an architecture to link the old fossil fuels economy, and this new Einsteinian, photonic and protonic one, it is not really doing progress, doing international benchmarking, doing our business well.
Petrotrin’s oil fuels economy has a good 30 years left. However, this fossil economy will become extinct. WASA, T&TEC, Petrotrin will have to eventually go. But how? Our governments and our peoples should be developing the architecture to link the old fossil-fuel energy economy with the emerging self-sustaining protonic and photonic one. The link should be as seamless, thoughtful and strategic as possible. Not blundering, blustering, callous, and despotic.