From Rights Action Group (RAG)
The announcement by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Paula Gopee-Scoon that the Government is taking a loan of US400 million, that is 2.5 Billion TT dollars from the Government of China to build the dubious Alutrint Aluminium Smelter is akin to high noon robbery of the Trinbagonian people and further evidence that we the people may have lost our democratic rights in our own country.
It is not surprising that the Government has failed to secure a private sector partner to replace Sural, as it had announced it would be doing a few months ago, for two reasons:
1. No sensible company would go near a smelter that is being built on a geologically unstable area, within an earthquake zone, on top of a water table that is no more than one foot below the ground. Alutrint's own Medical Monitoring Plan, stipulates that the workers in the plant would have to be tested every year for cancer and that some 9000 people living in La Brea, Sobo, Vessigny, Vance River and Union Villages - man, woman, new born babies - would have to be tested every two years for cancer. Experienced companies know that Alutrint is a human rights and environmental tragedy unfolding in Trinidad and Tobago.
2. The aluminium market is in a deep slump. Experienced aluminium companies around the world, such as the world's largest producer UC Rusal, and Alcoa are shelving new smelter projects and have been retrenching workers worldwide, including in Jamaica and Guyana, just next door. Alcoa so far has lain off 176,000 workers. These companies are not only into aluminium smelting, they own bauxite mines, the ore that is processed into alumina, which is then smelted to produce aluminium. Companies such as these are best placed to make a profit from a new aluminium smelter powered by cheap gas. Yet they know it would be financial suicide to finance a new smelter, much less to go out and take a loan to start one. The market is not projected to recover even in the next fifteen years. Alutrint says it has a production life of 30 years. Do the math. The only people going against this industry trend are the Chinese. If one looks at the global trend, one would see that China, with money to spare, is taking this opportunity to grab the bauxite, gas, and other resources of poor countries to increase its control of aluminium and its control of the world.
Therefore, RAG is also not surprised that China is giving Trinidad and Tobago a loan to build this ill-fated smelter. This smelter is being built by Chinese workers with Trinidadian money given in advance by China, which we will repay to China with interest. They have made a sweet (for them and sour (for us) deal . As we watched high ranking government officials clinking glasses on TV with the Chinese ambassador, we could only imagine this must be what it looks like when freedom wilts.
As we Trinbagonians are "tightening our belts" our Government is taking out a 2.5 billion dollar loan in the face of a global and national recession, to advance a project for which the our Courts have not yet pronounced on the legality of the Certificate of Environmental Clearance (CEC), that Alutrint received from the Environmental management Authority (EMA) on April 2nd, 2007.
After six years, the Government has failed to produce a single cost benefit analysis to prove that this project would be beneficial as it widely claims to the people of La Brea and to Trinidad and Tobago.
Perhaps the most fundamental point that should not escape the Trinbagonian people is that this 30 year gas guzzling smelter - a sure inept investment given that our proven natural gas reserves are for only 12 years - was to have benefited from a partnership with Sural, a Venezuelan multi-national with downstream aluminium products processing experience. Sural was to have brought not only capital but the experience in what the Government calls "value- added" production of wire, rods, rims, and other products.
Instead what we have is a smelter being built under the management of a CEO who happens to be the nubile son of Mr. Ken Julian (the ‘energy czar’). Phillip Julian has had no prior experience in a smelter, in aluminium production of wire, rims, rods, etc., or in managing a multi-billion dollar corporation. We are taking a loan of 2.5 billion dollars on the heads of every Trinbagonian person and putting into the hands of Mr. Ken Julian's son, Mr. Philip Julian, to start a business that by all indicators thus far is financially unviable and for which we have no experience whatsoever in an industry when those companies who do have such experience are pulling back. The fact is that Sural has pulled out and there is now no partner with any downstream process experience. There is just debt.
Further, RAG is calling on the Government and Editorial Boards and Owners of media houses to stop perpetuating myths about the Alutrint aluminium smelter.
Alutrint claims that the project is moving forward in an environmentally careful way. Perhaps it has not noticed the substance of the Judicial Review case that is still before our High Court. Until the Court pronounces, we view these statements by the Corporate-Executive arm of the State, carried uncritically by some in the media, as being in contempt of the Courts. The Corporate-Executive arm of government is operating as if the judiciary is irrelevant. Is this the extent to which our democracy has been weakened?
RAG wishes to remind the public that Alutrint was peddled to us as the "smallest smelter" in this part of the world. Its size was a factor always quoted in the Government's claims that the smelter is "safe" and "sustainable". Yet they are now telling us that the 125,000 Metric Tonne per Year (MTpY) capacity is only Phase 1, that a Phase 2 production increase is already planned to take the smelter to a 250,000 MTpY.
RAG also wishes to remind the public of the so called dream of Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago in the days of Michael Manley, Eric Williams, and Forbes Burnham involved bauxite mining, alumina refining, and aluminium smelting in the Caribbean Region by Caribbean people. It is not appropriate to keep invoking this dream when speaking of the Alutrint smelter. Today, all Caribbean bauxite mines are wholly or partly owned by private multi-national corporations. We in Trinidad will be buying the alumina from a private company not from any of our Caribbean brothers and sisters and, are taking a loan from China to smelt it into aluminium. We are only left to wonder who will be buying the aluminium from us. We wonder if we will even own the aluminium at all or if we will be paying back China in production quotas.
Further, RAG would like to remind the media and the public that at no point in the past six years has Alutrint ever produced a list of the specific employment opportunities that would be available to Trinbagonians and particularly residents of the La Brea and surrounding areas. At no point has Alutrint shown "employment opportunities" against the skills that exist or could actually be developed among local people so that they would "benefit" from "jobs". At no point has the Alutrint project shown that there would be "thousands and thousands of jobs" that the Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon spoke to in her statement yesterday. What is known is that hundreds of people were impoverished by the clearing of the land for building the smelter. They lost their farms, their animals - these were their "jobs" - jobs already lost!
RAG also wishes to point out that at no point has the Government been able or willing to prove to the Trinbagonian people that the investment in an aluminium sector represents the economic diversification it claims. Making rods, rims, and wire from smelted aluminium powered with natural gas is not diversification away from natural gas. How can we diversify our economy by getting into areas that are intensely energy dependent?
Furthermore, we are using our 12 years proven supply of natural gas to extract a metal, which is so notorious around the world for the energy needed to smelt it, that aluminium itself is in fact referred to as "solid energy".
The Cabinet has never disclosed the price at which the gas would be made available to the smelter, despite this being a requirement of our National Environmental Policy, and has never produced the financial proof that this project would be profitable or that it is better than alternative economic pursuits in the La Brea area. Yet we are told that a loan of 2.5 billion TT dollars on the heads of the children of this country has been agreed to.
History is repeating itself in Trinidad and Tobago. It is a sad day for the people of Trinidad and Tobago when the political party founded by the late Eric Williams has taken this country back to colonialism. It is a sad day for our people when the same architects of the first squandermania in the late 1970s have taken us into a second squandermania. A squandermania in an oil and gas boom is reckless; a squandermania in a recession could only be executed by individuals who value dictatorship over democracy.
This squandermania could only be executed by individuals who believe that it is correct and right for poor people in Trinidad to lose the little they have and to live in perpetual risk and fear of getting cancer.
RAG is calling on all right minded members of the PNM party to counsel their leaders away from the tragic path they are pursuing.
RAG is calling on all opposition parties to announce that they would not honour this Chinese loan if they come into Government.
RAG is calling on Community Organisations, NGOs, religious Bodies, Trade Unions, the business sector and other civil society bodies and individual citizens to stand up against this tragedy we are all about to gift to our children. It is upon us to save our economy, our democracy, our very country.
The announcement by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Paula Gopee-Scoon that the Government is taking a loan of US400 million, that is 2.5 Billion TT dollars from the Government of China to build the dubious Alutrint Aluminium Smelter is akin to high noon robbery of the Trinbagonian people and further evidence that we the people may have lost our democratic rights in our own country.
It is not surprising that the Government has failed to secure a private sector partner to replace Sural, as it had announced it would be doing a few months ago, for two reasons:
1. No sensible company would go near a smelter that is being built on a geologically unstable area, within an earthquake zone, on top of a water table that is no more than one foot below the ground. Alutrint's own Medical Monitoring Plan, stipulates that the workers in the plant would have to be tested every year for cancer and that some 9000 people living in La Brea, Sobo, Vessigny, Vance River and Union Villages - man, woman, new born babies - would have to be tested every two years for cancer. Experienced companies know that Alutrint is a human rights and environmental tragedy unfolding in Trinidad and Tobago.
2. The aluminium market is in a deep slump. Experienced aluminium companies around the world, such as the world's largest producer UC Rusal, and Alcoa are shelving new smelter projects and have been retrenching workers worldwide, including in Jamaica and Guyana, just next door. Alcoa so far has lain off 176,000 workers. These companies are not only into aluminium smelting, they own bauxite mines, the ore that is processed into alumina, which is then smelted to produce aluminium. Companies such as these are best placed to make a profit from a new aluminium smelter powered by cheap gas. Yet they know it would be financial suicide to finance a new smelter, much less to go out and take a loan to start one. The market is not projected to recover even in the next fifteen years. Alutrint says it has a production life of 30 years. Do the math. The only people going against this industry trend are the Chinese. If one looks at the global trend, one would see that China, with money to spare, is taking this opportunity to grab the bauxite, gas, and other resources of poor countries to increase its control of aluminium and its control of the world.
Therefore, RAG is also not surprised that China is giving Trinidad and Tobago a loan to build this ill-fated smelter. This smelter is being built by Chinese workers with Trinidadian money given in advance by China, which we will repay to China with interest. They have made a sweet (for them and sour (for us) deal . As we watched high ranking government officials clinking glasses on TV with the Chinese ambassador, we could only imagine this must be what it looks like when freedom wilts.
As we Trinbagonians are "tightening our belts" our Government is taking out a 2.5 billion dollar loan in the face of a global and national recession, to advance a project for which the our Courts have not yet pronounced on the legality of the Certificate of Environmental Clearance (CEC), that Alutrint received from the Environmental management Authority (EMA) on April 2nd, 2007.
After six years, the Government has failed to produce a single cost benefit analysis to prove that this project would be beneficial as it widely claims to the people of La Brea and to Trinidad and Tobago.
Perhaps the most fundamental point that should not escape the Trinbagonian people is that this 30 year gas guzzling smelter - a sure inept investment given that our proven natural gas reserves are for only 12 years - was to have benefited from a partnership with Sural, a Venezuelan multi-national with downstream aluminium products processing experience. Sural was to have brought not only capital but the experience in what the Government calls "value- added" production of wire, rods, rims, and other products.
Instead what we have is a smelter being built under the management of a CEO who happens to be the nubile son of Mr. Ken Julian (the ‘energy czar’). Phillip Julian has had no prior experience in a smelter, in aluminium production of wire, rims, rods, etc., or in managing a multi-billion dollar corporation. We are taking a loan of 2.5 billion dollars on the heads of every Trinbagonian person and putting into the hands of Mr. Ken Julian's son, Mr. Philip Julian, to start a business that by all indicators thus far is financially unviable and for which we have no experience whatsoever in an industry when those companies who do have such experience are pulling back. The fact is that Sural has pulled out and there is now no partner with any downstream process experience. There is just debt.
Further, RAG is calling on the Government and Editorial Boards and Owners of media houses to stop perpetuating myths about the Alutrint aluminium smelter.
Alutrint claims that the project is moving forward in an environmentally careful way. Perhaps it has not noticed the substance of the Judicial Review case that is still before our High Court. Until the Court pronounces, we view these statements by the Corporate-Executive arm of the State, carried uncritically by some in the media, as being in contempt of the Courts. The Corporate-Executive arm of government is operating as if the judiciary is irrelevant. Is this the extent to which our democracy has been weakened?
RAG wishes to remind the public that Alutrint was peddled to us as the "smallest smelter" in this part of the world. Its size was a factor always quoted in the Government's claims that the smelter is "safe" and "sustainable". Yet they are now telling us that the 125,000 Metric Tonne per Year (MTpY) capacity is only Phase 1, that a Phase 2 production increase is already planned to take the smelter to a 250,000 MTpY.
RAG also wishes to remind the public of the so called dream of Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago in the days of Michael Manley, Eric Williams, and Forbes Burnham involved bauxite mining, alumina refining, and aluminium smelting in the Caribbean Region by Caribbean people. It is not appropriate to keep invoking this dream when speaking of the Alutrint smelter. Today, all Caribbean bauxite mines are wholly or partly owned by private multi-national corporations. We in Trinidad will be buying the alumina from a private company not from any of our Caribbean brothers and sisters and, are taking a loan from China to smelt it into aluminium. We are only left to wonder who will be buying the aluminium from us. We wonder if we will even own the aluminium at all or if we will be paying back China in production quotas.
Further, RAG would like to remind the media and the public that at no point in the past six years has Alutrint ever produced a list of the specific employment opportunities that would be available to Trinbagonians and particularly residents of the La Brea and surrounding areas. At no point has Alutrint shown "employment opportunities" against the skills that exist or could actually be developed among local people so that they would "benefit" from "jobs". At no point has the Alutrint project shown that there would be "thousands and thousands of jobs" that the Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon spoke to in her statement yesterday. What is known is that hundreds of people were impoverished by the clearing of the land for building the smelter. They lost their farms, their animals - these were their "jobs" - jobs already lost!
RAG also wishes to point out that at no point has the Government been able or willing to prove to the Trinbagonian people that the investment in an aluminium sector represents the economic diversification it claims. Making rods, rims, and wire from smelted aluminium powered with natural gas is not diversification away from natural gas. How can we diversify our economy by getting into areas that are intensely energy dependent?
Furthermore, we are using our 12 years proven supply of natural gas to extract a metal, which is so notorious around the world for the energy needed to smelt it, that aluminium itself is in fact referred to as "solid energy".
The Cabinet has never disclosed the price at which the gas would be made available to the smelter, despite this being a requirement of our National Environmental Policy, and has never produced the financial proof that this project would be profitable or that it is better than alternative economic pursuits in the La Brea area. Yet we are told that a loan of 2.5 billion TT dollars on the heads of the children of this country has been agreed to.
History is repeating itself in Trinidad and Tobago. It is a sad day for the people of Trinidad and Tobago when the political party founded by the late Eric Williams has taken this country back to colonialism. It is a sad day for our people when the same architects of the first squandermania in the late 1970s have taken us into a second squandermania. A squandermania in an oil and gas boom is reckless; a squandermania in a recession could only be executed by individuals who value dictatorship over democracy.
This squandermania could only be executed by individuals who believe that it is correct and right for poor people in Trinidad to lose the little they have and to live in perpetual risk and fear of getting cancer.
RAG is calling on all right minded members of the PNM party to counsel their leaders away from the tragic path they are pursuing.
RAG is calling on all opposition parties to announce that they would not honour this Chinese loan if they come into Government.
RAG is calling on Community Organisations, NGOs, religious Bodies, Trade Unions, the business sector and other civil society bodies and individual citizens to stand up against this tragedy we are all about to gift to our children. It is upon us to save our economy, our democracy, our very country.
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. I HOPE THAT YOU HAVE SENT THIS INFORMATION TO ALL OF THE NEWSPAPERS AND TV NEWS STATIONS AS WELL AS TO THE (USELESS) POLITICAL PARTIES THAT PRETEND TO REPRESENT THE INTERESTS OF T&T CITIZENS, VOTERS AND TAXPAYERS
ReplyDeletewtf is 'RAG'? Shouldn't you spell it out at least once?
ReplyDeleteRe previous post: RAG = Rights Action Group. If you bothered to look at the beginning of the press releleasde, you would have seen that!
ReplyDelete