Two activists dispute Alutrint claims

Camille Bethel cbethel@trinidadexpress.com
Monday, January 18th 2010

LETTER: Dr Wayne Kublalsingh

Anti-smelter activists are questioning Alutrint’s public denial that construction work on its smelter was in progress despite a High Court injunction preventing it.

The company has been asked to say whether the silos being constructed near a port on the Union Industrial Estate, La Brea, were linked to the billion-dollar aluminium smelter.

On Thursday, Alutrint placed newspaper advertisements insisting that it was in full compliance with the law.

Earlier last week, UWI professor and activist, Dr Wayne Kublalsingh, went to Alutrint’s headquarters in Chaguanas in a failed attempt to deliver a letter to its acting chief executive officer, Philip Julien. The door was shut in his face. Alutrint stated that ’the work under way at the Brighton Port in La Brea is related to a project of the National Energy Corporation (NEC), not Alutrint, and is governed by a valid and legitimate CEC which is separate and distinct from the Alutrint CEC, which is presently before the courts’. The same applied to activities related to the construction of the TGU Power Plant and work taking place at the Temporary Work Camp (TWC), it was stated. But physicist Dr Peter Vine on Friday disputed Alutrint’s claim. And Dr Kublalsingh said the question of whether Alutrint was acting within the law by building the silo never arose. It was whether or not it was connected to the construction of the aluminium smelter, he said. ’We need to look at the larger picture here because the matter is still before the court and so the State should be acting more cautiously until the court’s decision is clear on the issue,’ he said. Source: http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161583769