Ex Petrotrin workers demand leases for land before 2025 election

FORMER Petrotrin workers are demanding they get leases to land they were promised as part of their termination benefit before the next general election to demonstrate this is not another election ploy.

Spokesman for the group of disgruntled, potential landowners, Christopher Jackman, said six years after the closure and restructuring of the State-owned company, not a single employee has received a plot of land promised by the Prime Minister.

He said all they have been given, thus far, are promises. He said the agreement was that the almost 5,000 workers would be given a parcel of land as part of their termination package entitlement.

The lands were to be distributed in three phases, for first-time homeowners, residential plots for those who are property owners in the second phase, as well as agricultural plots in the third and final phase.

Recipients would have been drawn by way of a lottery system. Jackman said three raffles were drawn and from the lot of 2,816 applications for first-time homeowners - On September 7, 2021 (70), August 6, 2022 (21) and August 9, 2023 (180) were issued lease titles by the Commissioner of State Lands. Of this number, only 170 were shortlisted.

He said that through a Freedom of Information request from the Land Settlement Agency (LSA), he discovered that not even one of the qualifying 170 people had received a lease.

LSA confirmed to Jackman by a June 17, 2024 letter that, "to date, no deeds of lease have been issued to eligible former employees.

"The issuance of deeds of lease to eligible randomly selected beneficiaries are being processed."

Stating that the programme seems to be stuck in the first phase, Jackman also sought clarification from the LSA about the residential and agricultural plots but the agency claimed it knew nothing about these other two phases, which Rowley promised.

To this query, the LSA replied, "With respect to the distribution of agricultural plots, the programme's policy framework mandates that the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries must first identify, develop and provide the necessary infrastructure for these plots."

LSA said as an agency under the Housing Ministry," it has been granted the responsibility to carry out the infrastructural development works of all residential lands, including the provision of and necessary lotification of the said lands under the programme."

He said the last time a raffle was drawn was before the last local government elections (August 2023) and now, before the general election, constitutionally due in 2025, noise is again being made about giving land to the former oil workers.

On September 25, Jackman, a former employee and president of the Pointe-a-Pierre branch of the Oilfields Workers Trade Union (OWTU), led one-time colleagues, whom he said felt "duped", in a silent protest outside the Southern Academy for the Performing Arts (SAPA) while the Housing Ministry engaged in allocating lands, inside.

Jackman said the ex-employees were expecting deeds/leases but instead were given letters of issuance informing them lots were identified and they would be the recipient sometime in the future. They were also given an October deadline to accept the offer. Should the deadline pass without acceptance, he said the names of those recipients would go back into the pool for another raffle draw.

“It was not a distribution of deeds. We feel this was just another exercise in politics. Remember, they offered and awarded the OWTU the opportunity to run the refinery, before an election and that never materialised. Now they are promising workers land again before the 2025 election," Jackman pointed out.

Minister in the Ministry of Housing Adrian Leonce, who distributed some 150 letters, referred to the silent protest in his address.

He said the distribution exercise was proof of Government delivering on its promise and a formal acknowledgement that the applicants have been selected to receive a residential lot under this programme.

Whereas, before the former employees would have only been told of the general area in which the lots are located, on Wednesday, specific details as to the location and lot numbers, were made allowing potential lot owners access to visit the land, he explained.

Leonce chastised those who “have made it their life's work to find problems in every solution.

He said time was needed to develop the land and bring it to a state of readiness to be handed over.

Demarcation of lots and equipping the land with electricity, water lines and access via roads took time, Leonce said.

He said the former workers would be given their deeds and they would become landowners very soon.