Renu­ka Singh

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley must re­sign now.

The call came yes­ter­day from Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who slammed Row­ley for the ap­par­ent flip-flop po­si­tion on the sale of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery to Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Ltd.

In a me­dia re­lease af­ter Gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ment that it had re­ject­ed Pa­tri­ot­ic’s lat­est bid, Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the col­lapse of the deal as “cat­a­stroph­ic” to the coun­try. She called for Row­ley’s head over what she de­scribed as an “un­for­giv­able dis­play of neg­li­gence and in­com­pe­tence which has placed Trinidad and To­ba­go in grave jeop­ardy.”

Pa­tri­ot­ic is ful­ly owned by the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) and was se­lect­ed by the State to take over the re­fin­ery back in Oc­to­ber 2019.

How­ev­er, at a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan said the same com­pa­ny that won out the ten­der to take over the re­fin­ery was now out.

But Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion change was not a sur­prise.

“Just as the Prime Min­is­ter lied when he said the re­fin­ery would not be shut down, days be­fore do­ing just that, the PNM nev­er in­tend­ed to ho­n­our the pledge they made to sell the re­fin­ery to its for­mer work­ers,” she said.

She said the joint con­fer­ence with Im­bert and Khan al­so raised more ques­tions than an­swers.

“If Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies had no set means of fi­nanc­ing, on what ba­sis did the Gov­ern­ment award them the re­fin­ery in the first place?” Per­sad-Bisses­sar asked.

“Why was Min­is­ter Im­bert so con­fi­dent in Oc­to­ber of 2019 that the re­fin­ery would be re­opened in 12 months? It is clear now that all these promis­es by the Gov­ern­ment pre-elec­tion to place the re­fin­ery in the hands of the cit­i­zens were just base­less elec­tion gim­micks.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said had the PNM Gov­ern­ment been se­ri­ous about ad­dress­ing the cit­i­zens’ con­cerns, they would have dealt with the Petrotrin is­sue in a time­ly man­ner.

“How­ev­er, they chose to put pol­i­tics above peo­ple by al­low­ing this to be­come yet an­oth­er failed promise,” she said.

“Their in­com­pe­tence and in­so­lence have even wors­ened the state of the re­fin­ery, leav­ing it idle for so long. Giv­en that the Petrotrin re­fin­ery has been shut for al­most three years now, and with ever-in­creas­ing costs to restart it, who will now want to pur­chase this as­set?”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so asked whether Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro was in line to pur­chase the re­fin­ery.

“For the past two years, the PNM has bla­tant­ly lied, giv­ing false hope to the thou­sands of ex-Petrotrin work­ers now on the bread­line that the re­fin­ery would be open. The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go must nev­er for­get this great be­tray­al by the PNM,” she said.

“The PNM kept promis­ing the restart­ing of the re­fin­ery in the hands of the ex-work­ers but since 2018 to date, they have giv­en noth­ing but ex­cus­es, keep­ing the OW­TU and the ex-work­ers in a con­stant state of un­cer­tain­ty.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the de­struc­tion of Petrotrin, along with the cri­sis un­fold­ing at the Pt Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, was “due to Kei­th Row­ley’s bad gas ne­go­ti­a­tions” putting the en­er­gy sec­tor in “com­plete melt­down”.

“The ram­i­fi­ca­tions of this are cat­a­stroph­ic,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. 

“As the largest earn­er of for­eign ex­change, the col­lapse of our en­er­gy sec­tor will af­fect every cit­i­zen. It means our cur­rent FOREX cri­sis will on­ly get worse. Re­tail­ers have al­ready warned that a food cri­sis is loom­ing due to the in­abil­i­ty of many to ac­cess FOREX,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s col­league, MP for Tabaquite Ani­ta Haynes, al­so not­ed the break­down of the deal.

“The Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to play its game of sur­prise, tri­fling with our bil­lion-dol­lar as­sets. The Fi­nance Min­is­ter has flip-flopped on this is­sue at al­most every turn, con­stant­ly in­tro­duc­ing new pol­i­cy caveats which have neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed the sale of the re­fin­ery,” she said in a sep­a­rate me­dia re­lease.

 “The Min­is­ter of En­er­gy is tru­ly clue­less and sep­a­rat­ed from the very stake­hold­ers whose best in­ter­est he is man­dat­ed to se­cure. While he de­scribed the re­fin­ery as a can­cer, the re­al can­cer is the un­em­ploy­ment and con­se­quent fi­nan­cial ru­in that hun­dreds of house­holds have been fac­ing as a re­sult of the Gov­ern­ment’s blind­sid­ing de­ci­sion in 2018.”  

Haynes al­so not­ed the “Gov­ern­ment’s ap­par­ent in­dif­fer­ence to the men and women stuck in lim­bo” af­ter the clo­sure of the re­fin­ery.

 “There’s no sug­ar-coat­ing the fact that the Gov­ern­ment has aban­doned cit­i­zens on the ar­gu­ment of dol­lar and cents. Still, even in that ar­gu­ment, there are flaws.

“We recog­nise the costs in­volved in sell­ing the re­fin­ery, as well as re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing the re­fin­ery to­wards restart­ing op­er­a­tions. But what of the op­por­tu­ni­ty cost? What of the loss­es ac­crued every day that the re­fin­ery re­mains dor­mant?” she asked.

Haynes, like Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ques­tioned the loss of for­eign ex­change.