Trinidad Opposition Leader warns of possible fuel shortages

(Trinidad Guardian) Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­cent ‘at­tack’ on pub­lic ser­vants could be an in­di­ca­tion that he plans to fire them.

Speak­ing at the UNC’s Mon­day night fo­rum, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the gov­ern­ment is find­ing it dif­fi­cult to find mon­ey to pay pub­lic ser­vants be­cause Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had shut down Petrotrin with­out cre­at­ing new av­enues for rev­enue gen­er­a­tion.

She pre­dict­ed a dire fu­ture say­ing there will al­so be fu­el short­ages be­cause of the mis­han­dling of T&T’s pe­tro­le­um re­sources.

“Dr Row­ley says pub­lic ser­vants are lazy. He den­i­grates pub­lic ser­vice. In every crop of peo­ple, there is good, bad and in­dif­fer­ent. Why he comes now to say pub­lic ser­vants lazy?

Why would he at­tack the pub­lic ser­vants? Did some­thing hap­pen re­cent­ly? I think they don’t have the mon­ey for pub­lic ser­vants. They can­not pay the pub­lic ser­vants so he is set­ting the stage. Is it that they in­tend to fire pub­lic ser­vants?” Per­sad-Bisses­sar asked.

She added, ” This is the man who said the gov­ern­ment is not go­ing to close down Petrotrin. To­day I am ask­ing, is the govt go­ing to fire pub­lic ser­vants?”

She not­ed that the changes in Petrotrin were “fright­en­ing.”

“We used to get For­eign Ex­change from Petrotrin but Forex has dried up. What do we get from the com­pa­nies that re­placed Petrotrin?

She said some gas sta­tions were not get­ting their full quo­ta of fu­el.

” What I pre­dict is that there is go­ing to be a short­age of fu­els at the gas sta­tion. They now have to buy the fu­el to put in the pumps.

Some­one who owns a gas sta­tion said they are not get­ting the sup­plies of fu­el, ” she added.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader called on the prime min­is­ter to say where he was get­ting funds for fu­el.

“Let us hear what is the sit­u­a­tion with fund­ing now that we have to im­port fu­el. They shut down Petrotrin and say it was not work­ing. They put Es­pinet and he licks up every­one and now they lick up him.

You are bring­ing peo­ple with no ex­pe­ri­ence what­so­ev­er. Tell us what ex­pe­ri­ence they have in the en­er­gy sec­tor, ” she said, mak­ing ref­er­ence to the new ap­point­ments. She said TT was fac­ing an eco­nom­ic.tate of emer­gency as well as a crim­i­nal state of emer­gency.

” If we don’t do what we have to do, then heav­en help our chil­dren. There will be no fu­ture for the young peo­ple of our coun­try, ” she added.