RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Danc­ing to the tune of his own ca­lyp­so "The Truth", Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU), An­cel Ro­get, dra­mat­i­cal­ly burned pho­tographs of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to sym­bol­ise the union's dis­gust with the Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery ac­qui­si­tion process.

A few dozen OW­TU work­ers gath­ered at the Pointe-a-Pierre Round­about on Fri­day morn­ing, as bid­ders con­duct­ed site vis­its to the moth­balled re­fin­ery, which was shut down by the gov­ern­ment in No­vem­ber 2018.

The OW­TU's com­pa­ny, Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Lim­it­ed, has been seek­ing to op­er­ate the re­fin­ery since 2019 and was named the pre­ferred bid­der by the gov­ern­ment that year, but talks sub­se­quent­ly fell through.

Ad­dress­ing the me­dia, Ro­get said since the re­fin­ery's shut­down, the gov­ern­ment has spent $43 bil­lion im­port­ing fu­els. The clo­sure of the re­fin­ery, he said, has robbed the coun­try of a ma­jor for­eign ex­change earn­er.

Ro­get ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley of re­peat­ed­ly try­ing to de­ceive Pa­tri­ot­ic de­spite be­ing the pre­ferred bid­der which beat out 72 oth­er com­peti­tors in the re­fin­ery ac­qui­si­tion process.

Now that the Prime Min­is­ter has re­vealed there are nine bid­ders in the ne­go­ti­a­tion process, Ro­get claimed he had in­for­ma­tion that the gov­ern­ment planned to squash all bids soon and award the re­fin­ery to In­di­an in­dus­tri­al­ist Naveen Jin­dal.

Ro­get chal­lenged the Prime Min­is­ter and the En­er­gy Min­is­ter to a pub­lic de­bate on why the re­fin­ery was shut­tered and how much the coun­try has lost as a re­sult of its clo­sure.

Jin­dal, who met with the Prime Min­is­ter at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s last month, ex­pressed in­ter­est in the re­fin­ery.  How­ev­er, this was met with strong op­po­si­tion from the OW­TU on the ba­sis that he is fac­ing cor­rup­tion charges in his home­land.

Jin­dal is the chair­man of Jin­dal Steel and Pow­er Ltd. The union leader al­so burned a pho­to­graph of Jin­dal at the Pointe-a-Pierre Round­about as the union vowed to bring ru­in to the gov­ern­ment.

Ro­get said Pa­tri­ot­ic can bring sev­er­al re­fin­ery plants in work­ing or­der with­in nine months. He said for­mer Petrotrin work­ers are fa­mil­iar with the re­fin­ery and are the on­ly ones qual­i­fied to have the re­fin­ery up and run­ning.