Wayne Kublalsingh-Republic Day Speech

Dr. Wayne Kublalsingh

REPUBLIC DAY SPEECH

Many thanks to Professor Pantin for inviting me to speak. The movement to deconstruct aluminum smelting in Trinidad and Tobago is made up of groups from Cedros, Chatham, Cap-de-Ville, Otaheite, Claxton Bay, Curepe and Port of Spain. Many thanks to those of you in the audience who have spent decades of intellectual labour attempting to persuade our governments to abide by the laws of science, logic, and even law itself. For four years we in the anti-smelter movement have been attempting to get from the government information on the economics of Alutrint. Philip Julien, the son of Professor Ken Julien, the acting Chief Executive Officer of Alutrint, said quite clearly: “Alutrint is the best economic fit for Trinidad and Tobago.” There is nothing better in the world for Trinidad and Tobago than Alutrint. Well, we want to know if this is true or not. The best way of finding out this is to do a cost accounting of Alutrint. To study the cost-benefit analysis of Alutrint. To see where the state has outlined, here are the costs, the prospective costs. And here are the benefits, the prospective benefits. And so for four years citizens have been trying to obtain such an analysis from the state. It is the most effective tool we know for measuring economic viability. This is the story of our attempts.

First, there was the attempt of Parliament. Senator Mary King. As head of the Joint Select Committee of Parliament in April 2006, she called on officials of the National Gas Company, the National Energy Company, Alutrint itself, members of the National Gas Export Task Force, officials such as Dr Lenny Saith, Professor Ken Julien, Philip Julien to attend the committee hearing. She wanted to talk to them. What will it cost Alutrint to process a tonne of aluminum? Where are you going to market your product? What are the externalities of this project? Well, they refused to attend. She once more demanded they come. They refused. She called on the Speaker to demand that they appear. He refused. Here is Senator King writing a month later: “Nothing has come to the Parliament and little to the general public which defines and justifies the creation of an aluminum industry with respect to the feasibility and optimum use of our diminishing natural gas reserves, its impact on the environment, the levels of earnings from the sale of gas and a comparison with the longer uses to which this gas can be put in the context of Peak Oil.” (May, 2006. Express Newspaper).

Second, we went to the Environment Management Company. Rosanna Farmer, Peter Vine and Wayne Kublalsingh wrote the EMA a letter if they could furnish details of the economics of Alutrint, or any cost benefit analysis for the Alutrint project. The National Environment Policy gives the EMA an option. The Policy says, here EMA, you can request from an applicant for a Certificate of Environmental Clearance a cost benefit analysis, especially for capital intensive, gas intensive, projects. The EMA did not exercise this option. Nor did it answer our letter. We paid three visits to the EMA; the CEO refused to meet with us. A sit-in ensued. It lasted all day and eventually police were called out to throw Kublalsingh out of the building. A forty day fast in front of the EMA ensued. The citizens came, they fasted. They were calling for three specific things, concrete things. Among them, any information on any cost benefit analysis that the EMA knew of. No information.

Following the visit to the EMA, letters were written to the National Gas Company, the National Energy Corporation, the Minister of Energy under the Freedom of Information Act requesting a cost benefit analysis. The answer: confidential. On 2007 Peter Vine and Wayne Kublalsingh visited the office of the National Gas Company in Couva requesting a meeting with the CEO. The NEC locked their front door, locked their front gate. The CEO, Mr Prakash Saith, arrived and requested his security to throw out the visitors. When this proved unenforceable the police were called. Kublalsingh was arrested and taken away.

In June 2009, citizens of eight anti-smelter groups wrote to Professor Ken Julien, the Minister of Energy Conrad Enill, the acting CEO of Alutrint Philip Julien. The letter requested:

1. A meeting with you to discuss the economic viability of Alutrint.

2. A detailed accounting of the costs of Alutrint, past, current and proposed.

3. The cost-benefit analysis of the Alutrint project.

There has been no reply to this request.

In late June 2009 we then wrote to the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament requesting that the Committee write the Acting Auditor General asking for “a statement of the accounts of the state enterprise Alutrint”. We reminded them that the citizens are the ultimate shareholders of Alutrint. The Chairman did write the Acting Auditor General. No reply.

In September 2009, we hosted a symposium at St Mary’s College on the Economics of Alutrint. The symposium panel comprised noted professional economists. Here is the resolution of this symposium:

“WHEREAS:

We are in a position where our proven gas reserves are declining;

We do not have the higher order factors to develop the downstream industries related to the smelter;

We need to prioritise the use of incomes from energy to uses other than those, like the Aluminum Smelter project, whose viability is very much in doubt;

And having recognised,

The large carbon emission and the related health risk to our society, in particular to the 4080 residents who live in a radius of 2km from the proposed smelter and the cost of monitoring those most at risk;

The demise of a quality human existence in the neighbouring communities;

The environmental and ecological losses;

That there is no basic information on the actual returns to the country, financial or otherwise;

BE IT RESOLVED THAT:

The Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago release immediately to the people of TT the rationale for the Aluminum Smelter, including detailed costs of natural gas and other inputs and expected revenues over the next 20 years and, in the event that this information is not forthcoming, that the GORTT suspend with immediate effect the Aluminum Smelter project.”

So this is our brief history of begging. You beg and beg and beg and then what do you do? The stakeholders have to beg the state to see its own economic business. We have written to Minister of Finance, Corporation Sole. We have had to remind her and other state officials of The State Enterprises Performance Monitoring Manual, published by the Ministry of Finance, Investments. This Manual, the rules of which, according to the Ministry itself, must be enforced by the Corporation Sole, states: “Government has agreed that State Enterprises be required to publish in at least one major daily newspaper a summary of the audited financial statements within 4 months to the end of their financial year and a summary of the unaudited half-yearly statements within two months of the mid-year date.”

Well, why would the state officials not want to provide the accounts? Why are they hiding Alutrint’s accounts? Why do they refuse to sit down with the Parliament, the people, the professional economists to discuss costs and benefits?

Here is what some of our professionals, intellectuals of the highest order have said of Alutrint’s viablility:

DR LLOYD BEST, economist. “Best believes that the aluminum smelter is a major mistake and questions why government was committing resources to a capital intensive project which he said as fraught with risk and which ‘might be hit with a major recession in the global economy which could come while it is being constructed or shortly after its construction.’ Best was concerned the country was allowing its resources to be used in a smelter with little return to the country.” (June, 2004, Express Business, Curtis Williams article).

PROFESSOR JOHN SPENCE, University of the West Indies Professor, former Independent Senator. Professor wrote a three part analysis of the proposed smelting industry for Trinidad and Tobago. “We should say no to aluminum smelting in general but aluminum could be imported for down-stream industries … My conclusion is definitely, that we should not smelt bauxite or alumina in Trinidad. This is based on the social, health, environmental, economic and governance issues.” (April 2006, Express Newspaper).

PROFESSOR DENNIS PANTIN, University of the West Indies professor and Head of the Sustainable Economic Development Unit (SEDU) at UWI. Professor Pantin and a team of his colleagues advocate full disclosure on smelter project and a Sustainable Development Planning Framework, which would entail, in part, a Cost Benefit Analysis of each smelter. “A final decision on these projects [Alcoa and Alutrint] requires, at worst, comparison of alternative uses of the natural gas inputs, the land space in Chatham and La Brea relative to alternative uses of the gas, land space and other human and financial costs which the society would have to incur: all based on full disclosure to the ultimate shareholders: i.e. the citizens, residents and taxpayers of T&T.” (SEDU Discussion Brief No. 1, A Sustainable Development Planning Framework for Mega-Projects in Small Places, December, 2006).

PROFESSOR SELWYN RYAN. Former University of the West Indies professor in Politics. “One wonders whether Willians would now insist in building the smelter on the terms that are apparently being considered and which do not seem to be of much benefit to Trinidad and Tobago.” (July, 2006, Express Newspaper).

DR STEVE SMITH, Medical Consultant, President of The Medical Board of Trinidad and Tobago, “The potential environmental onslaught that will occur, in the wake of the construction of an aluminum smelter in the South West Peninsula of this country, constitutes the single most significant threat to gains achieved through advances in “public health” during my own lifetime. It is a threat which, if not taken seriously will certainly undo many of the gains that have been achieved in health since the Moyne Commission of 1937, a threat which would be evermore acute in the light of a continuing and impotent curative health sector.” (Executive Summary, Report on SENES Human Health and Ecological Risk Assessment of Alutrint Aluminum Complex, June 2007).

PROFESSOR KENNETH RAMCHAND. Former professor at the University of the West Indies, Independent Senator. “We face in the South Western Peninsula the imminent laying law of agriculture and fishing, the dislocation of families and villages, and the visionless breaking up of communities and community spirit established over a long period of living together on the land and on the sea.” (Senate Motion, July 6th July 2005).

REG POTTER, International Gas Expert. “It will take discoveries of 1.5 trillion cubic feet per year to simply stand still and at present we have only 12 years of gas production rate left. The time is passed due for a total moratorium on all new gas-related projects before the country is totally ruined.” (Guardian Newspaper, July 2006)

At the recent symposium on the Economics of Alutrint, Ms Mary King gave reasons why smelter would be an economic bust. The lack of requisite high order factors, the impossibility of cluster formation in this industry, the disinterestedness of the private sector to develop such clusters, the high cost of externalities, our gas reserve position, the lack of vertical integration; smelter is following a failed ISCOTT model. We cannot afford not to stop smelter she declared. At the symposium, Professor Julian Kenny raised the question of the high carbon costs. Reg Potter raised the question of declining gas reserves.

So. From whom would we get accountability? Professor Ken Julien? Minister Enill? Alutrint’s Philip Julien? Dr Lenny Saith and his brother Prakash Saith? We are talking to rocks, stones, boulders. We cannot get if from them. We cannot get constitutional reform from them. No cost benefit analysis, no accounting, no constitution. So what do we do? What is to be done?

Well, Professor Dennis Pantin has been working, like a Roman Catholic nun, getting up a four in the morning, duty, time, cleaning, working hard hard hard on constitutional reform. And the problem is implementation. Could we rely on our governments, as presently constituted, to implement? History, over the last five hundred years of human history, has shown that new constitutions, significantly altered constitutions, are implemented, in almost one hundred percent of the cases, at the end of a long period of revolution, mass movement, social upheaval – at the end of a period of break, fracture. The modern Iraqi and Afghan constitutions, implemented after war, tremendous blood, and imposed from outside. Our independence constitutions, after great social movements in India, Ireland, Egypt in the first half of the 20thCentury, the 1920’s, 1930’s, 40’s. The US constitution, after a revolutionary war with the colonial British. The constitutionality of the British Parliament, in the 17th Century, the English Revolution, Cromwell, blood. So this is the period we are entering now. This is what is going to happen. Fracture. Contraction. And at the end of it, Professor Pantin and his team, if it is finished, will say, here, we have a constitution. Look, here it is.

And what will be the story of smelter in this period? Well, I have been thinking how to frame this, sitting there waiting to talk, to an audience as this one. This is how it is going to be. There are three entities involved in this struggle: the smelter itself, the architects of smelter and the activists. At the end of this story, of all the three entities, only one, one only, will be left standing. That is the way it is going to be. Thank you.

Wayne Kublalsingh

September 24th 2009