KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) is rub­bish­ing Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert’s fu­el hike de­fence that T&T has the sec­ond-low­est fu­el prices in the Caribbean, say­ing that cit­i­zens of those coun­tries en­joy a bet­ter stan­dard of liv­ing.

At a news con­fer­ence in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get ac­cused Im­bert of de­ceit fol­low­ing an an­nounce­ment that the Gov­ern­ment would in­crease fu­el prices on April 19.

It is the same day most par­ents send their chil­dren back to school for the first time in over two years.

Da­ta com­piled by OW­TU showed that while T&T has a min­i­mum wage of $17.50, sev­er­al oth­er Caribbean is­lands were high­er. Con­vert­ed to TT cur­ren­cy, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da pays $20.76 per hour.

St Kitts and Nevis pays $22.61 while Bar­ba­dos is $29.11. Puer­to Ri­co pays $58.23, the Ba­hamas is $36.65, the Cay­man Is­lands $41.10 and the Unit­ed King­dom $84.16.

“They try to jus­ti­fy it by mak­ing com­par­isons with oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions, where­in those coun­tries they do not go to make the step fur­ther to com­pare the cost of liv­ing and so­cial safe­ty net and how they ap­proach the is­sue of a liv­ing wage. While the min­is­ter de­ceit­ful­ly tells you and tries to con the na­tion, they have a choice of bur­den­ing the pop­u­la­tion or pro­vid­ing for the pop­u­la­tion. They choose to bur­den the pop­u­la­tion,” Ro­get said.

The OW­TU said cit­i­zens now face this prob­lem be­cause the Gov­ern­ment closed Petrotrin and its Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery in De­cem­ber 2018.

The OW­TU at­tempt­ed to pur­chase the re­fin­ery with the promise of pro­vid­ing af­ford­able fu­el to the coun­try but the Gov­ern­ment re­ject­ed its bids four times.

Ro­get said the Gov­ern­ment lied and di­vid­ed the pop­u­la­tion, giv­ing the im­pres­sion that Petrotrin was leak­ing mon­ey and clos­ing it would leave more fund­ing for the Gov­ern­ment to open schools, in­crease hos­pi­tal beds and im­prove road con­di­tions.

Ro­get said the re­fin­ery al­ways im­port­ed oil from its in­cep­tion to clo­sure. He said T&T con­sumes ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30,000 bar­rels of fu­el dai­ly. He ar­gued that ex­clud­ing ex­ports, there is enough crude to re­fine to pro­duce in­ex­pen­sive fu­el for lo­cal con­sump­tion but that in­stead, the Gov­ern­ment us­es the for­eign ex­change from ex­port­ing crude to im­port fu­el for lo­cal con­sump­tion.

“Shut­ting down the re­fin­ery al­so crip­pled, sti­fled, and stopped to­tal­ly the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to pro­vide fu­el for it­self. We have enough oil in this coun­try if we have to pro­duce fu­els for the coun­tries’ con­sump­tion alone on a dai­ly ba­sis alone,” Ro­get said.

He said it was time for cit­i­zens to stand with the OW­TU and like-mind­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions to tell the Gov­ern­ment that “enough is enough” and all must ben­e­fit from the fruits of the land.

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS