Rowley reveals UNC aluminium industry

Responding to an earlier contribution by Dookeran during debate in the House of Representatives on Friday, Rowley said it was pure hypocrisy for the UNC to praise an initiative while they were in government and then disown and criticise it when they were in opposition. To thunderous desk-thumping from the government benches, Rowley added that this clearly told the population that the UNC “don’t want anything good for the people of TT.”

Quoting from a speech made by former prime minister Basdeo Panday at the Hilton Trinidad on November 12, 1998 at the signing of an agreement with Norsk Hydro to construct an aluminium smelter in TT, Rowley said it was Panday who described the establishment of an aluminium industry as “a new dawn” for TT because it would bring a host of socio-economic gains for the nation. Opposition MPs had no answer to this statement or Rowley’s subsequent revelation that on February 6,1996, then public utilities minister Ganga Singh tried to dispel allegations that the controversial Incogen deal was not a “sweetheart, hand me deal” by arguing that the additional electrical power to be generated by Incogen (a project which never materialised and is now under investigation by the Government) was to be used by two downstream aluminium industries, one of which was named by Singh as the Aluminium Company of TT.

Rowley dismissed Dookeran’s argument that the gas price for the proposed aluminium smelters in South Trinidad should be made public because as a former Central Bank Governor during the UNC’s stint in office, Dookeran knows that this is never done and he (Dookeran) was never told or sought to ask then PM Panday what the gas price was for any energy-based project that the former regime was involved in.

Rowley said it was Dookeran as planning minister in the NAR government (1986 to 1991) who drafted an economic policy which if implemented would have prevented further investments in urea and methanol and would have never allowed TT to enjoy the economic prosperity it does today.

Rowley further stated that it was the UNC which cost TT significant energy revenues through poor negotiations with one foreign energy multinational company and the PNM corrected it in 2001.

He said all industries have risks but those risks can be managed in order to protect people, the environment and bring economic benefits to TT and this is what Government was doing with the aluminium industry.