RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has dis­missed crit­i­cisms that T&T is now a “laugh­ing stock” for pur­chas­ing fu­el from Ja­maica de­spite be­ing an oil pro­duc­er for over 100 years.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter the open­ing of the City Heights Hous­ing Com­plex in San Fer­nan­do on Fri­day, Dr Row­ley de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion, say­ing it was in the coun­try’s best in­ter­est.

“Again, that is peo­ple want­i­ng to make mis­chief. There is no end to mis­chief in this coun­try. How could you be a laugh­ing stock when you are sell­ing fu­el to the Caribbean re­gion?” he asked.

He said Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny, a state en­ter­prise re­spon­si­ble for fu­el im­ports and sales, op­er­at­ed based on eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“Buy­ing and sell­ing fu­el as Paria does—if you see an op­por­tu­ni­ty to buy fu­el from Ja­maica, which is a Cari­com coun­try, which gives you an ad­van­tage of ob­tain­ing from there as op­posed to an ex­ter­nal Cari­com source—what’s wrong with that? Are you im­ply­ing that Paria shouldn’t buy and sell fu­el?” he asked.

Row­ley dis­missed those rais­ing con­cerns, say­ing, “Peo­ple lis­ten to those who don’t know what they are talk­ing about and are just con­cerned about mak­ing mis­chief.”

He said Paria was re­spon­si­ble for sourc­ing re­fined fu­el and must make de­ci­sions based on busi­ness ad­van­tages.

“Paria is a state com­pa­ny that buys and sells a range of re­fined fu­el. If Paria sees an op­por­tu­ni­ty to buy fu­el from Ja­maica, which is with­in Cari­com, it gives them a busi­ness ad­van­tage,” he said.

“And all of a sud­den, it’s an is­sue, as though some­thing is wrong. What is wrong?” he asked.

He al­so took is­sue with a ge­ol­o­gist who com­ment­ed on the mat­ter on tele­vi­sion.

“I saw (name called) on tele­vi­sion cast­ing as­per­sions on Paria and how the coun­try’s en­er­gy busi­ness is man­aged,” he said.

Row­ley sug­gest­ed that the ge­ol­o­gist’s com­ments were mo­ti­vat­ed by a per­son­al grudge.

“If we had paid (name called) the $2.5 mil­lion he re­quest­ed for a small job ear­ly in the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, he might not have been talk­ing fool­ish­ness,” Row­ley said.

He said those with­out knowl­edge of the sec­tor should not in­ter­fere.

“If peo­ple stop in­ter­fer­ing where they don’t know, we will all be hap­pi­er,” he said.