Residents get jobs

Smelter work to continue...
Camille Bethel cbethel@trinidadexpress.com
Thursday, May 28th 2009
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_business?id=161483184

The building of the smelter is expected to resume today, after protesting residents living near the Union Industrial Estate were promised jobs by officials of the Alutrint aluminium plant and the contractor building a power station to supply the smelter.

The deal was negotiated yesterday, the second day of a demonstration that saw the billion-dollar construction project shut down. A team made up of residents from surrounding villages met with representatives of both Alutrint and the power plant builders yesterday and parties came to mutual agreements, the Express was told.

Residents had protested that they were not being given jobs on the construction sites, despite supporting the smelter and openly campaigning for it. Resident Holly Lewis said, "We met with the contractor for the power plant, and they told us that they have room for 100-plus workers, and within the next two weeks they will be taking them in-in stages." Resident Roland Noble said a team of residents met with Alutrint and there was an agreement that more residents would be employed in the coming months. Imposters pretending to be from the villages and looking for work will be identified and rooted out in the process, he said. Noble added, "We are getting 100 per cent support from Alutrint. Alutrint listened to all of our grievances and assured us that they will be meeting with Conrad Enill, Minister of Energy, tomorrow (today) to inform him of what our issues are, because they said he wanted to know what grievances we had."