Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les has strong­ly de­fend­ed the con­tro­ver­sial 2018 clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, de­scrib­ing it as a painful but nec­es­sary act of lead­er­ship tak­en to save Trinidad and To­ba­go from eco­nom­ic col­lapse.

Gon­za­les yes­ter­day re­spond­ed to trade union lead­ers who, dur­ing the Labour Day ral­ly in Fyz­abad on Fri­day, de­clared that work­ing-class cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to suf­fer from the fall­out of the re­fin­ery’s shut­down.

Gon­za­les coun­tered that the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion has presided over an es­ti­mat­ed 60,000 job loss­es in its first year in of­fice alone, draw­ing a sharp con­trast be­tween the two par­ties’ eco­nom­ic man­age­ment.