The true meaning of anti-industrialisation

Published: 20 Aug 2009

I absolutely do not disapprove of T&T’s industrialisation drive. Indeed, I have not read or viewed any of my fellow “cohorts” who have espoused a view that was negative to industrialisation, per se.

According to logic, a la Anthony Wilson: the people who are against the specific activity of aluminium smelting and do so based upon a plethora of rational, well-supported arguments under the following headings:

(a) capital cost (b) employment opportunities (c) opportunity costs (d) alternative industries (e) economies of scale (or lack thereof) (f) health and safety (g) global competition (h) social impact (i) environmental degradation are all anti-industrialisation. Based on Mr Wilson’s views, it appears that: • parents who keep their children away from a dilapidated, rat-infested school are anti-education; • regulatory bodies who determine seasonal fishing time periods, size of individual catch, quotas and the like are anti-food gathering; • the Arrive Alive group, with all of its lobbying for the imposition of greater measures for road safety, is anti-motor vehicle; Clearly, your argument is untenable. There must be room for specific dissent without being broad-brushed in the manner you suggest. In any event, your somewhat simplistic piece, entitled, “Are T&T’s environmentalists anti-people,” printed on July 23, in which you quoted liberally from a speech of then Prime Minister Panday, revealed his support for an aluminium smelter. You then postulated that there was bi-partisan support for the smelter. This move of yours brought back vivid memories of my two children, ages five and six. Having been caught consuming rat poison, which they somehow managed to unearth from the deepest recesses of their grandmother’s kitchen, they each blurted out: “Daddy, he (she) ate it first.” Your simplistic position is thus: Basdeo Panday and the UNC wanted a smelter, now Patrick Manning and the PNM want a smelter, therefore, it must be good. One would have thought you would have learned in nursery school that two wrongs could not make a right. To the contrary, in following your logic, we would find that there was corruption under the UNC with the airport, and if corruption is found in the Tarouba Stadium, corruption must be good. If Mr Wilson fails to declare his/her strong political affiliation under the veneer of independence, and the editor of another newspaper does the same thing, is journalistic compromise good? If Winston Dookeran is given an opportunity to govern this country and he decides to build another residence himself for $244 million, squandermania is good? It is quite amazing that, on July 23, you were able to conclude: “I cannot understand the attempts by a few environmentalists to protest the current attempt by the Government to establish an aluminium smelter in La Brea and a steel complex in Claxton Bay.” Yet, on July 30, you state: “I do not know enough about the feasibility of the aluminium project to support it.” May I humbly suggest that you take the time to read, investigate, research, accumulate and assimilate data before painting your fellow citizens with your broad, tainted brush, which, rather than challenge them, really reveals an argument that cannot withstand scrutiny. Unlike you, I find it difficult to “support the Government’s unstated policy of maximising the use of T&T’s natural resources.” I am certain that your readers are glad to know that you are so well placed so as to be in a position to express an “unstated” Cabinet policy. Kindly focus on the term “maximising” in your unofficial formulation of government policy as it relates to the Alutrint smelter. Then and only then would you see that even you are anti-smelter and, like me, you do not have to be an environmentalist to be anti-smelter. In your latest diatribe, (BG View August 6), you characterised the PNM Government’s housing drive as a boon of industrialisation. By the way, the right to shelter is a constitutional right. In any event, does that mean that it is just as correct to waste millions of dollars on opening ceremonies, moats, curtains, blimps, buildings, summits and the like? To spend in a manner that was beyond our economic absorptive capacity; which not only over-heated the economy, but forced us to import labour and to engage in deficit financing for the year? Your second word of the day is “prioritisation.” Let us put the schools, hospitals and houses first. These could be afforded by industrialisation that does not include smelters. The second boom went quicker than the proverbial “Jamaican dose of salts” comment. Has the quality of our collective life improved? I read an interesting article where the author said of the first boom: “By 1987, T&T's foreign reserves were exhausted, it was facing a bunching of foreign debt which had been taken to build Pt Lisas and its ability to borrow on the international capital markets was severely constrained. Enter the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It is the judgment of the IMF that the T&T authorities failed to manage this windfall appropriately.” You should take a read; you wrote it in January, this year. Anil Roberts Via e-mail Source: http://guardian.co.tt/business/business-guardian/2009/08/20/true-meaning-anti-industrialisation