Sando a shanty town

SAN FERNANDO now looks like a shanty town, said Allyson West, Minister in the Ministry of Finance during yesterday’s Senate debate on the Petrotrin closure. However she keenly hoped the city and country would benefit from activity in the legacy companies coming out of Petrotrin.

“I said I am a proud southerner and when I lived in San Fernando it was booming, it was bright, it was growing, it was developing," West related.

“In the last couple of years when I have driven down to San Fernando, I have been distressed, by the fact that San Fernando to me seems to be turning more and more into a shanty town.

“There is no growth, there is no development and you are not seeing the prosperity that the old Texaco and Petrotrin brought at the time. “That to me was a reflection of what was happening with company that was the leading industry in the area, and it needs an injection if San Fernando itself is to survive and grow.”

West said the decision to shut Petrotrin was not taken in a callous way and that the Government was mindful of workers and sought to soften the blow. She said the average severance payment was $525,000. West said out of 3,400 people retrenched, some 2,000 were millennials, youngsters whom she said foreign studies have shown will usually change jobs 20 times in their careers.

This figure plus the fact that those millennials retrenched at Petrotrin have lump-sums, means their view of the closure may not be so dire, West said. “There is lots of opportunity for life after Petrotrin.” Otherwise West said projections are predicting the export of crude oil and import of refined oil will generate profits to let the new Petrotrin pay its upcoming loan payment.