KEVON FELMINE

For­mer Petrotrin work­ers were buoyed yes­ter­day by news that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to ho­n­our pre­vi­ous agree­ments to al­lo­cate them land and re­open their med­ical cen­tres, as the Re­fin­ery Re­view Com­mit­tee pre­pares to de­liv­er its re­port on the Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery restart this week.

Scores of for­mer ca­su­al, tem­po­rary, and per­ma­nent work­ers gath­ered at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny’s car park as the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) marked the sev­enth an­niver­sary of the re­fin­ery’s clo­sure and the mass dis­missal of all Petrotrin em­ploy­ees. The con­tro­ver­sial re­struc­tur­ing by the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion had end­ed T&T’s re­fin­ing op­er­a­tions. But as Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Ernesto Ke­sar ad­dressed the largest union gath­er­ing in years, op­ti­mism re­turned.