‘To date we haven’t seen any private company successful in its bid for Petrotrin and it remains dormant wasting away into corrosion becoming an eyesore and rust bucket.’
By Neil Gosine
I find it astounding that the Government could have approved the closure of Petrotrin in 2018 so easily.
A closure that surely has had a domino effect across the country, not to mention putting thousands of families on the breadline, as well as hundreds of contractors and service companies out of business.
Don’t get me wrong, I do not hold to the point of view that the OWTU is always right, in fact, I have had my fair share of run-ins with the union’s President General, Ancel Roget over my term as serving on the board of National Petroleum Marketing Company (NP) from 2010 to 2015.
One particularly difficult impasse was in October 2013 where the board of NP had no choice but to fire 68 workers for walking off the job without proper industrial notice. At the time of the walkout and work stoppage, the OWTU cited privatisation as the reason.
Ironically, the same accusations from them of this Government for their closure of Petrotrin, although this time the accusations may still prove valid.
To date we haven’t seen any private company successful in its bid for Petrotrin and it remains dormant wasting away into corrosion becoming an eyesore and rust bucket.
Only time will tell what will eventually become of the once great Petrotrin. Once the envies of the Caribbean and once a top oil refinery of this region.
However, at that time the NP board had to take the difficult decision, to fire the workers for walking off on the job, due to facing similar actions two years previous to that incident. It must be noted that every time the Union had taken action and shut down NP more than 20 times before that fateful day of the firings, it cost the company approximately $9.5 million a day every time.
As soon as that board term expired and the new board came in, the new board promptly decided to rehire all 68 workers costing the company millions in back pay and now has put NP on the chopping block just like Petrotrin was because of financial losses.
Whether that was the right decision or not, it is not for me to say however, we now find ourselves in this predicament where the Government has closed Petrotrin down for over four years already and one has to ask themselves if the OWTU didn’t bring this one on themselves.
The OWTU does not ease up, even to the detriment of the company’s financial stability in the wake of continued issues of reliability of the operations at the refinery and constant strikes to use as leverage for higher wages.
This has contributed to it being very uncompetitive in its market just like NP faces now. Petrotrin however, has been left now to dwindle away into obscurity, rotting where it stands.
A very important and critical issue is the way in which the closure was communicated to the union and the population at large and still have many unanswered questions.
The Government has now seen that the decision for this closure have had far-reaching consequences in the economy, further in a Covid-19 stricken economy and the companies and citizens that depended on this refinery for their livelihoods now lay devastated.
The problem was not just 2,500 workers and 1,500 temporary and casual workers but hundreds of small service companies and many more thousands of people. To say it was just approximately 4,000 workers is disingenuous. Everyone knows there is much more to that number than the Government was purporting. There were many businesses, shops, restaurants, stores, and even doubles men that depended on the refinery and their patronage for their businesses and livelihood.
There always seems to be no proper plan in the Government’s decision to shut down our assets.
With this refinery and the false promises by the Government for the union to own and operate a new company of the refinery’s assets, reeked of an underhanded move and up to now no one understands really why they had to do what they have done here, the shutdown of the refinery as we have not seen anything happened since then.
Roget has been played for a fool on this one and ended up with egg on his face for trusting an untrustworthy Government that clearly only cares about its own agenda and the optics for elections while giving false promises that never materialise.
There are so many unanswered questions here and it remains unanswered.
Like everything in this country, it’s forgotten in nine days as we focus on the new scandals and topics that change the narrative so that no one follows up the real story behind why the refinery was really closed down.
Who benefited from the closure and why it still remains closed? Like the World GTL plant, the Desulfurization plant, the Fuel Gantry Caroni Terminal Facility that cost approximately 1.2 billion and still lies dormant in Caroni and many many more.
We have never gotten proper answers or accounting information on why these projects failed or who was ultimately responsible and who profited from the demise of these projects.
(Neil Gosine is an insurance executive, the North East Regional Coordinator of the United National Congress and a former chairman of NP. The comments and opinions expressed by him in this column are not necessarily those of AZPNews.com, a division of Complete Image Limited.)
Commentary: Petrotrin Closure Still Hurting Us
‘To date we haven’t seen any private company successful in its bid for Petrotrin and it remains dormant wasting away into corrosion becoming an eyesore and rust bucket.’
I find it astounding that the Government could have approved the closure of Petrotrin in 2018 so easily.
A closure that surely has had a domino effect across the country, not to mention putting thousands of families on the breadline, as well as hundreds of contractors and service companies out of business.
Don’t get me wrong, I do not hold to the point of view that the OWTU is always right, in fact, I have had my fair share of run-ins with the union’s President General, Ancel Roget over my term as serving on the board of National Petroleum Marketing Company (NP) from 2010 to 2015.
One particularly difficult impasse was in October 2013 where the board of NP had no choice but to fire 68 workers for walking off the job without proper industrial notice. At the time of the walkout and work stoppage, the OWTU cited privatisation as the reason.
Ironically, the same accusations from them of this Government for their closure of Petrotrin, although this time the accusations may still prove valid.
To date we haven’t seen any private company successful in its bid for Petrotrin and it remains dormant wasting away into corrosion becoming an eyesore and rust bucket.
Only time will tell what will eventually become of the once great Petrotrin. Once the envies of the Caribbean and once a top oil refinery of this region.
However, at that time the NP board had to take the difficult decision, to fire the workers for walking off on the job, due to facing similar actions two years previous to that incident. It must be noted that every time the Union had taken action and shut down NP more than 20 times before that fateful day of the firings, it cost the company approximately $9.5 million a day every time.
As soon as that board term expired and the new board came in, the new board promptly decided to rehire all 68 workers costing the company millions in back pay and now has put NP on the chopping block just like Petrotrin was because of financial losses.
Whether that was the right decision or not, it is not for me to say however, we now find ourselves in this predicament where the Government has closed Petrotrin down for over four years already and one has to ask themselves if the OWTU didn’t bring this one on themselves.
The OWTU does not ease up, even to the detriment of the company’s financial stability in the wake of continued issues of reliability of the operations at the refinery and constant strikes to use as leverage for higher wages.
This has contributed to it being very uncompetitive in its market just like NP faces now. Petrotrin however, has been left now to dwindle away into obscurity, rotting where it stands.
A very important and critical issue is the way in which the closure was communicated to the union and the population at large and still have many unanswered questions.
The Government has now seen that the decision for this closure have had far-reaching consequences in the economy, further in a Covid-19 stricken economy and the companies and citizens that depended on this refinery for their livelihoods now lay devastated.
The problem was not just 2,500 workers and 1,500 temporary and casual workers but hundreds of small service companies and many more thousands of people. To say it was just approximately 4,000 workers is disingenuous. Everyone knows there is much more to that number than the Government was purporting. There were many businesses, shops, restaurants, stores, and even doubles men that depended on the refinery and their patronage for their businesses and livelihood.
There always seems to be no proper plan in the Government’s decision to shut down our assets.
With this refinery and the false promises by the Government for the union to own and operate a new company of the refinery’s assets, reeked of an underhanded move and up to now no one understands really why they had to do what they have done here, the shutdown of the refinery as we have not seen anything happened since then.
Roget has been played for a fool on this one and ended up with egg on his face for trusting an untrustworthy Government that clearly only cares about its own agenda and the optics for elections while giving false promises that never materialise.
There are so many unanswered questions here and it remains unanswered.
Like everything in this country, it’s forgotten in nine days as we focus on the new scandals and topics that change the narrative so that no one follows up the real story behind why the refinery was really closed down.
Who benefited from the closure and why it still remains closed? Like the World GTL plant, the Desulfurization plant, the Fuel Gantry Caroni Terminal Facility that cost approximately 1.2 billion and still lies dormant in Caroni and many many more.
We have never gotten proper answers or accounting information on why these projects failed or who was ultimately responsible and who profited from the demise of these projects.
(Neil Gosine is an insurance executive, the North East Regional Coordinator of the United National Congress and a former chairman of NP. The comments and opinions expressed by him in this column are not necessarily those of AZPNews.com, a division of Complete Image Limited.)