Last week, the Petrotrin chairman, Wilfred Espinet, said Petrotrin was not for sale. In his address to the nation on Sunday night, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said the refinery was up for sale with the OWTU getting the first option to buy and operate.
Now on Tuesday night, Rowley said Petrotrin was not for sale.
So what is for sale?
He assured the country that his Government was not closing down Petrotrin, although it does intend to shut down its refinery operations. He said with the company continuously losing and due to pay up on a US$850 million debt in months, Government had no choice but to act on the slide now.
Rowley added, “The Government is not closing down Petrotrin. The Government of Trinidad and Tobago is not closing down Petrotrin.
“We understand very clearly the repercussions of the action that we have taken, that we need very little encouragement and very little advice as to our responsibility to the people of the southland for whom that refinery was their bread and butter and their children’s future.”
Rowley told his supporters in Marabella that a day of reckoning always comes and the PNM was not afraid to restructure Petrotrin to return to earning revenue.
He also pledged to offer Petrotrin workers stocks in the restructured company, saying this would give them a chance to make extra earnings.
DR KEITH ROWLEY
