A SCANDAL of monumental proportions.
This was the response from Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union president general Ancel Roget over an announcement by the Office of the Prime Minister that Indian businessman Naveen Jindal is interested in the potential of the Petrotrin refinery and that interest formed part of his discussion last week with Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.
Last week Monday, Jindal, chairman of Jindal Power and Steel Ltd, was invited to the Diplomatic Centre in Port of Spain where he held discussions with Rowley.
Speaking at a news conference at OWTU’s Paramount Building in San Fernando yesterday, Roget said that procurement legislation was passed last year and questioned what part of that legislation requires the prime minister to meet with an interested party in purchasing an asset of the State before anything else happens.
‘That’s not all, the sale of the Pointe-a-Pierre refinery is now involved in a process, a non-binding bidding process. And that process has some eight interested parties who would have supplied the requirements to Scotiabank International, who has responsibility for the bidding process,’ said Roget.
(flashback)‘people power’: Ancel Roget, president general, Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union, centre, leads the annual Labour Day march on June 19 last year through Pepper Village, Fyzabad. Flanking him are Shiraz Khan, left, former president, Sheep and Goat Farmers Association; and David Forbes, general secretary, Postal Workers Union. —Photos: DEXTER PHILIP
Noting that in the past the OWTU would have made a bid for the refinery via Patriotic Energies and Technologies, he said the union is also a party in the current bidding process.
He added: ‘Up comes Indian businessman in the Diplomatic Centre, in the face of procurement legislation, in the face of the procedure and the process that is being engaged. Up comes Indian businessman in a display of supreme bias, discussing the same asset with the prime minister.’
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