Chamber head: Revisit executive salaries at Petrotrin

The OWTU’s threat of strike action against Petrotrin was called off yesterday when the union accepted a five percent offer from Petrotrin for the period 2011-2014/2015.

The threat of strike inspired many to criticise the OWTU’s demand for a wage increase as untimely as the nation is experiencing an economic downturn and Petrotrin is operating at a loss. The OWTU responded to that critique citing corruption and mismanagement as the cause of Petrotrin’s unprofitability.

To this, Sookhai said, “We understand that and we do sympathise with the OWTU’s concern that maybe it is time for a national conversation to revisit salaries across the board and maybe if some of these high level management that are making exorbitant amounts of salaries, that needs to be revisited.” Leading up to yesterday’s settlement, the business community had called on the OWTU to call off their strike.

These business leaders have now praised the settlement and are calling for focus to now be turned to Petrotrin becoming a profitable company.

“The most important thing right now is the restructuring of Petrotrin,” said Liaquat Ali, President of the Couva/ Point Lisas Chamber of Commerce. “Petrotrin cannot afford business as usual and continue to be losing money. They have to wean, whether it is corruption or inefficiency.

They have to sit down and have a conversation to ensure that Petrotrin becomes profitable at the end of the day. If it means privatisation, then so be it. I think they will seriously have to look at getting private investors into Petrotrin so that it would be more viable because as you know, with most of the State enterprises, it is difficult to get them profitable.” Daphne Bartlett of the San Fernando Business Association said, “We would ask that the same way the President of the OWTU has been clamouring for more money for these workers, he must go out and clamour for them to go out there and improve the number of barrels per day that is being produced by Petrotrin. He should ensure that management does whatever it needs to do to increase the production of oil so that when we sell more, we get more money.”