UNC Senator hits smelter firms

Her criticism came at the UNC’s Monday Night Forum at Bamboo Village No 2. Kernahan-Jones had sat on the JSC which faced an evasive Alutrint and an absent Alcoa. “They come to Parliament as if they are dumb. They refuse to answer, because the Executive gives them that power.”

She said Prime Minister Patrick Manning had given power to Alcoa, Alutrint, the National Energy Company (NEC) and the Ministry of Energy, to disrespect the JSCs.

The Government, she said, is a sell-out who would let Alcoa walk all over it. She said Manning is selling out Trinidad and Tobago to Alcoa. “Who is to benefit? Who is gaining from these sweet-heart deals they are making behind closed doors? Not even the Joint Select Committee of Parliament can get proper answers from them.”

She disapproved of the smelters. “Nowhere in the world do you have two aluminium smelters with such land mass and such a high population density.”

The smelters would threaten the area with toxic emissions, destroy forest reserves and agricultural land, and pollute aquifers supplying water to South Trinidad, she said.

“They haven’t told us what they will do with all the toxic spent potliners, all the cyanides and so on which will come out of the whole smelting process.”

She said the country has no regulations or toxic-waste landfill to deal with that. “They say ‘maybe’ they will ‘try’ to ship it out of the country, and they will try to find a way to get around the Basel Convention and they might head to the high seas... If you hear nonsense!”

She said people will be susceptible to toxic waste which the smelters will bury in Chatham rather than properly dispose of it.

Kernahan-Jones hit the Government for failing to tackle violent criminals, in contrast to the 1970 PNM government’s controversial killing of members of the National Union of Freedom Fighters (who included her sister Beverly Jones) whom she said were “thirteen of the finest young patriots of this country, between the ages of 16 and 25.”