Petrotrin on brink of disaster

“The general public should know that the State of Petrotrin today is that it is in a precarious state and if we did not move quickly to arrest the decline that was taking place, at this state institution, it would fail altogether,” Roger said outside of the minister’s office at Wrightson Road in Port-of-Spain.

“The last government mismanaged Petrotrin down to the ground.

We are at the point now where we want to rescue the company and the Union requested an urgent meeting with the minister to put forward plans to rescue Petrotrin from where it is today,” Roget said. “It is on the brink of disaster simply because of the mismanagement and corruption that took place. But more than that we want to move the company forward and upwards,” he added.

He said the union had issued warnings on Petrotrin in the past but these were ignored.

“Prior to May 24 this year we have been articulating our views in terms of how Petrotrin should be run and those rules unfortunately for them run counter to how Petrotrin should be run at that time. Petrotrin under the PNM failed. We do not want to repeat that,” he said.

“If it is that the national Budget is contemplating some $15 billion in revenue coming from the energy sector the energy sector must be able to produce that and therefore Petrotrin is a major stakeholder in that regard.

“Therefore we have a number of initiatives we feel that should immediately go into place. One of our major concerns is the lack of a board of directors for Petrotrin.

That affects a number of State enterprises. You cannot play with a State enterprise like Petrotrin and dilly dally and so on and not have a board to introduce policy directions and so forth so that the company can move forward.” Roget called for a re-organising of the company and urged the Government to not appoint political appointees in crucial posts which require key skills. “We want to re-organise the company quickly,” he said. “If we do not act now we will have real difficulty.” People were appointed “in too many positions not on the basis of merit but on the basis of a party card. That was the approach of the former administration. That is why today you have some $70 billion in cost overruns at that company.” “Another concern we have is the intention to farm out and lease out a very lucrative acreage of Petrotrin and we are going to raise those concerns with the Minister this afternoon,” he said.