Roget on refinery bidding process: ‘A scandal in the making’
Guyana
resident General of the Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM) Ancel Roget has accused Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley of ‘bias’ following his official meeting with an Indian businessman who expressed his interest in the Petrotrin refinery.
Rowley met Naveen Jindal two weeks ago to discuss business prospects for the refinery. It was subsequently revealed to the public that Jindal was allegedly facing corruption and bribery charges from the Indian government.
However, Rowley said he was ‘unaware’ of the charges the billionaire industrialist was facing.
Speaking at a press conference held at the OWTU’s building in San Fernando on Tuesday, Roget said it was unfair that the prime minister chose to meet an interested party beforehand, particularly as this country’s public procurement legislation was passed in the Parliament last year.
He further raised the fact that the OWTU would have won the first bid for the refinery- against 76 other parties- in 2019 as all of the necessary requirements and documents were provided for use. Roget explained that to date, the OWTU’s bid would still be considered as valid as everything remained the same.
He said: “The process that is currently engaged to select a purchaser for those assets had been closed on May 10, 2024. Up comes last week, this Indian businessman, in the Diplomatic Centre, in the face of procurement legislation, in the face of the procedure and the process that is being engaged, up comes this Indian businessman in a display of supreme bias discussing the same asset with the prime minister.”
“Trinidad and Tobago, that could never be correct or right. That could not be ethically correct, morally correct, spiritually correct and it’s definitely not lawfully correct and right,” he added.
Roget claimed that had another political party been in government then the move would not have been met with the current silence.
He further called out the government on its decision to announce the successful bidder by the end of August this year, pushing back the original timeframe from June, to benefit taxpayers.
Roget said: “The taxpayers are we the workers, the people of this country, all of us who that asset belongs to… And we will not sit idly by, this is a scandal in the making. This is a scandal in the making where the prime minister could just get up and announce that he changed the date, changed the rules of the game, engaged a businessman, and displayed extreme bias…because nobody else was invited to the Diplomatic Centre to talk about the process and the refinery.”
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