Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed be­lieves that if the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery is sold and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar lat­er be­comes prime min­is­ter, she should in­ves­ti­gate what led to such a sale.

He said as prime min­is­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar would be with­in her right to dis­man­tle any agree­ment that doesn’t seek cit­i­zens’ best in­ter­est.

Mo­hammed gave his thoughts on the mat­ter af­ter Gov­ern­ment an­nounced on Thurs­day that Niger­ian firm Oan­do PLC was se­lect­ed as the pre­ferred bid­der for the re­fin­ery.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar sub­se­quent­ly said the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) won’t ho­n­our any agree­ment the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment en­ters in­to re­gard­ing the re­fin­ery and guar­an­teed a UNC gov­ern­ment would open in­ves­ti­ga­tions against every­one who par­tic­i­pates in “this theft of the re­fin­ery as­sets.”

Mo­hammed said he was con­cerned about the cau­tious lan­guage used by act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young in his jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the Gov­ern­ment choos­ing Oan­do.

“I’m not con­vinced by the ex­pla­na­tion pro­vid­ed by the min­is­ter, who at the very least could have told the pop­u­la­tion one truth, is the re­fin­ery to be leased or sold?

“If the re­fin­ery is sold, I be­lieve she (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) should in­ves­ti­gate what led to such a sale (I re­ject the idea of sell­ing off as­sets of this kind). And if the Op­po­si­tion Leader first suc­ceeds in win­ning the next gen­er­al elec­tion, she, as prime min­is­ter, would be with­in her right to dis­man­tle any agree­ment by this ad­min­is­tra­tion that does not seek the best in­ter­est of the cit­i­zen­ry,” Mo­hammed stressed.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said a few years ago, he pulled a team of ex­perts to­geth­er to make a bid for the re­fin­ery but fi­nance proved a chal­lenge, end­ing their ef­forts. He said the re­fin­ery was a “sig­nif­i­cant em­ploy­er and in­come gen­er­a­tor be­fore its clo­sure.”

On the lat­est de­vel­op­ment with Oan­do, Singh added, “I’m grate­ful for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the restart of the re­fin­ery and what that means for the coun­try, and more so the south­ern econ­o­my, which is my pri­ma­ry con­cern. The ma­jor­i­ty of skilled and un­skilled labour came from the South­land. Many down­stream in­dus­tries not on­ly pro­vid­ed key ser­vices but ben­e­fit­ed from the re­fin­ery’s op­er­a­tion.”

“If Mrs Bisses­sar be­comes prime min­is­ter, and she feels there’s a need to do so (in­ves­ti­gate), that’s her pre­rog­a­tive,” Singh said.