Police were called to the home of former Petrotrin executive chairman Malcolm Jones as over 50 Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) members protested in the driveway to his San Fernando home yesterday, demanding that he be removed from government’s standing committee on energy.
So intense was the workers’ rejection of Jones, that they remixed their traditional union song, We Shall Overcome, to sing, “Malcolm Jones must make a jail. Deep in my heart, I do believe, Malcolm Jones will make a jail.
“Malcolm Jones has failed then and he will fail now,” OWTU president general Ancel Roget said as he addressed the media in St Joseph Village.
The union took umbrage at Jones’ response to the state’s decision to drop a US$109 million case against him for the construction of Petrotrin’s failed $2.7 billion Gas to Liquids plant.
“I did absolutely nothing wrong. It was in the best interest of the company, Petrotrin and the country. But if I had to, I would do it all over again,” Jones said to the GML Enterprise Desk last week.
However, those comments had him retreating inside his home yesterday and he even refused to comment on the union’s protest against him yesterday. When reporters rang his intercom, he said he had no comment to make. About ten minutes later, two police officers went onto the property, spoke to Jones, returned outside and supervised the union’s gathering.
“We are calling on the Government to do the correct thing. Mr Jones cannot make any valuable contribution to this country on any matter at all and especially in energy matters. When he was given profound and enormous responsibility for Petrotrin, the crown jewel of this country, a major state enterprise, he would have failed miserably,” Roget said
He said Jones and the former board of directors went ahead with the Gas To Liquid project despite the union's researched advice that it would have failed. He said the union had suggested that money be spent on exploration and increased production in Trinmar’s Soldado field. He said this was disregarded, leading Petrotrin to lose billions of dollars.
“One of the things that continue to infuriate and incense the workers is the way in which Mr Jones dismissed this. As far as he is concerned, he did absolutely nothing wrong. As far as he is concerned, the failure of Petrotrin under his stewardship, there is nothing wrong with that. Indeed, the statement that he made last week Friday was a very profound one and that statement further incensed the Petrotrin workers.
“The Petrotrin workers were denied their variable pay for the financial year 2009 to 2010 despite the fact that the company made a profit on the basis of the workers’ input. The retirees did not get an increase for that period, simply because the company claimed they made a loss in that period.
“Therefore, we are saying that the statement made by Mr Malcolm Jones, he is quoted as saying ‘I did absolutely nothing wrong,’ I mean looking back after the fact when every citizen of this country would recognise that Petrotrin failed under his stewardship, he is saying that he did absolutely nothing wrong, but even worse, he is quoted as saying, ‘it was in the best interest of the company, Petrotrin, and the country.’
“But hear this, he went further to say in the face of all this outcry, that if he had to do it, he would do it again. We think that this was a display of gross disrespect, arrogance and contempt for the Petrotrin workers and for the people of Trinidad and Tobago.”
Government must drop cases against the union
Roget said the People’s Partnership only took Jones to court to give money to their attorney friends despite them knowing that the case would collapse. Now that the People’s National Movement oversaw the withdrawal of that case, he said they should order Petrotrin, National Petroleum and T&TEC to cancel their court appeals against the union.
“Mr Jones cannot get special treatment and the workers of Petrotrin, the workers of this country, OWTU members, be singled out for a different type of treatment.”