Alutrint eyEing Chinese labour

Alutrint’s corporate communications manager Clement James made this disclosure at yesterday’s Joint Select Committee meeting in Parliament, in response to a question by UNC Senator Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan.

“We’re talking about it,” James confessed. Explaining the rationale behind the move, he added, “the aluminium smelter we’re planning to build here would be new and there is not the range of skills in TT for the jobs it would bring. We’re hoping to bring the Chinese workers in to develop and train locals.”

James said Alutrint already held talks with the National Energy Skills Centre, MIC, Servol and other groups, concerning the training of workers for the smelters.

“We’re hoping to have a training centre at the old Vessigny school in La Brea,” he said.

There are also plans to bring in a CEMEC, a Chinese company to construct Alutrint’s smelter plant, it was disclosed at the meeting.

Moving into another area Vijai Lall, project engineer with the National Energy Corporation, said contrary to reports from certain groups, no church or school in Chatham is to be relocated for the construction of the smelter. Further, there are mostly dilapidated, uninhabited houses in the area in question, which persons are only now trying to put a value to, Lall told the committee meeting.

He also said with the exception of two properties, most of the land in the area is agricultural State land, and the leases people are holding for them are almost up.

“When I went into the area, I saw that there was no organised farming, it was sporadic. Contrary to popular belief that the land for the smelter is pristine, the whole area is a matrix of roads which were designed for the wells in the area. And the forest is really secondary regrowth,” Lall said.