Activist ‘attacks’ La Brea MP’s van

By Richardson Dhalai
Thursday, June 11 2009
http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,101845.html

A social activist has been arrested for the malicious damage of La Brea MP Fitzgerald Jeffrey’s pick-up van as Jeffrey was leaving the Union Industrial Estate after a ceremony to mark the start of construction of a US$786 million power plant.

The activist jumped into the tray of the van and pounded the hood prompting Jeffrey to stop the vehicle. Police removed the man from the van and took him to the Point Fortin Police Station where he was charged for malicious damage and disorderly behaviour. He is expected to appear before a Point Fortin magistrate on Friday.

The man was among a group of environmental activists camped under a tent at the entrance of the industrial estate, where they waited earlier for the arrival of Prime Minister Patrick Manning, who attended the ground-breaking ceremony for the power plant which is to provide electricity for the Alutrint aluminium smelter plant.

The activists approached Manning’s official car with placards, calling for a meeting, but his driver sped on through the entrance. Manning later dismissed protests against the construction of the smelter plant as the work of well-known environmental activists who have little support from the wider La Brea community. After the groundbreaking ceremony for the US$786 million Trinidad Generation Unlimited (TGU) power plant project, Manning revealed the majority of workers on the Alutrint and power plant facilities would come from La Brea and environs.

He told reporters afterwards he did not see any La Brea residents at the tent pitched at the compound’s entrance.

“What I noticed this morning was the regular anti-smelter crowd, that is what I saw, I was very careful to see if I would see the people of La Brea in that tent and they were not there...which means the people of La Brea continue to support the establishment of the aluminium smelter and they recognise the effect such a smelter would have on the economic and social life in La Brea,” Manning said.

Told that several persons had accused the Government of betraying the community claiming there was a lack of employment opportunities at the smelter and power plants, Manning said everyone “must be free to express their view in the same way that the Government must be free top pursue it’s own development.”

“Seventy percent of the employment on the power plant will be from La Brea and 800 out of the 1,000 people on the smelter will be from La Brea, those are the facts,” he declared.

During his address, Manning reiterated construction of the US$600 million smelter plant would begin later this year.

Even though environmental activists have also protested against the Essar steel plant to be constructed at Claxton Bay, Manning said Government was still “moving towards” the US$1.2 billion integrated iron and steel complex.

Meanwhile, High Court judge Justice Mira Dean-Armorer is due to hand down a judgment next Tuesday which could see the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) censured for allowing the construction of the controversial smelter plant to go forward.

The judge will decide whether the decision by the EMA to grant a licence to Alutrint to construct the plant was lawful. The judge could grant an order to stay work on construction of the smelter plant which was announced by Manning in 2007, after protests by environmental groups forced Government to cancel construction of a proposed plant in Chatham.

On September 13, 2007, Justice Peter Jamadhar granted a group of claimants leave to challenge the EMA’s granting of a certificate of environmental clearance (CEC).

The court action was brought by the Chatham/Cap-de-Ville Environmental Protection Group, the Trinidad and Tobago Civil Rights Association (TTCRA), Smelter Caravan, People United Respecting Environment, Maxine Harris and Janet Alexander. Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj leads the (TTCRA).

During the course of hearings of the judicial review case, which came up before Dean-Armorer, Maharaj argued the EMA did not take all environmental factors into consideration.

“The EMA, instead of determining the likely effect of the project on human beings and the environment, turned a deaf ear,” Maharaj argued. “They have put the horse before the cart...this is a national joke.”