Abdulah says Petrotrin can become profitable

Movement for Social Justice (MSJ), political leader David Abdulah made the observation at a media conference yesterday at the party’s St Joseph road, San Fernando headquarters as he weighed in on the recent wage settlement between Petrotrin and the Oilfields Workers Trade Union (OWTU).

“Two things have to do be done for Petrotrin to become profitable- the first issue has to be the governance structure and speaking now for MSJ, one of the problems of our state enterprise sector is how the arrangements are put in place for the governance, not only at Petrotrin but right across the state sector,” he said.

“We propose that all the major civil society organisations, the Law Association, the Chartered Accountants Association, the Professional engineers, the trade unions, and others put up names of persons from within their membership and including women organisations and youth, put up names of persons who have the competence to serve on boards and it is from within that pool of persons who are nominated by civil society that the government will then appoint to the state boards,’ Abdulah said.

“In that way we would get decisions that are non-partisan, and those boards can continue in effect beyond the five year cycle of governments, because you have to build a continuity of decision making in order to get the right business decisions for the state enterprises,” he said.

And regarding the privatisation of state companies, he said this was the argument from private sector companies as they want to get a hold of the “assets that the state companies have in order for them to make more money, so privatisation transfers wealth from the state, which is all of us as taxpayers to a few people and they then benefit.” And regarding the increase in oil production, he said this would decrease the amount of imported oil and increased the refinery margins.

He said the Pointe a Pierre refinery had a capacity of 170,000 barrels of oil per day while local production stood at 45,000 barrels of oil per day.

And with the union agreeing to an interim increase of five percent, he said the “cost” of the strike would have been greater than the “cost of settling the negotiations.” “So that the losses to Petrotrin as a result of a strike would have been more than the amount of money than Petrotrin has to pay out in wages and salaries at this time,’ he said.