YETMING KNOCKS PNM ‘MORON’ PLAN

Former UNC Finance Minister, Gerald Yetming, has criticised Government’s proposed alternative to Caroni (1975) Limited, saying the new company would also require massive Government subventions to survive on a yearly basis.

Yetming was addressing a community meeting at the Avocat Vedic School, Fyzabad, on Tuesday night. In his traditionally sombre tone, Yetming informed the small gathering that the new company, the Sugar Manufacturing Company of TT, was a “conceptual company” based on studies carried out by the Divestment Secretariat. “These morons take this conceptual report, and in their haste to give the impression that they are pro-active and they are doing something, rushes ahead and offers VSEP to 10,000 people,” he said. Yetming added: “If Caroni (1975) Limited required $500 million per year, this Sugar Manufacturing Company of Trinidad and Tobago, after they cut all that they want to cut, will probably require subventions to the tune of $400 million.”

The St Joseph MP advised that additional feasibility studies still had to be conducted on the restructuring  plans for the State-owned sugar company, saying, “Everybody, including the labourer in the field” agreed that “something has to be done in Caroni.”  However, Yetming cautioned that Government’s VSEP package was not the way forward for both the Company or the thousands of sugar workers who were being “forced” to accept the package. He said a number of rural communities scattered across Central and South Trinidad would “die” because of the PNM Government’s discrimination against sugar workers. Yetming cited the ailing Port Authority of TT as proof of Government’s biased stance against workers in the sugar industry saying the Port owed in excess of $3B, while Caroni owed $2.2 billion. “If they say they giving the workers of the Port VSEP, and deal with the four subsidaries afterwards, as they doing with Caroni, the whole of Laventille will come into Port-of-Spain and mash up town,” Yetming slammed.

The former Minister of Finance also knocked the Prime Minister’s handling of the BWIA crisis saying a reliable airline service was a critical factor in the nation’s infrastructure. Yetming said the airline was needed to get goods and services into and out of the country.