Moontown

This week’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) has become much bigger than anticipated with climate change assuming top priority, Energy Minister Conrad Enill said yesterday, following the People’s National Movement’s general council meeting at the prime minister’s constituency office in San Fernando.

Enill said Foreign Affairs Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon told attendees at the general council meeting that while CHOGM started as the commonwealth heads meeting, it has embraced the issue of climate change since the meeting offers the only opportunity for heads to meet before the Copenhagen meeting in December in two weeks time.

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’The opportunity in Trinidad and Tobago for all these leaders to be here gives the community the chance to really talk about the climate control issue in a particular way,’ he said, noting the attendance of leaders from non-Commonwealth countries, Demark’s Lars Lokke Rasmussen and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, as special guests of the Commonwealth. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has also confirmed his attendance as a special guest at this week’s meeting.

Asked whether US President Barack Obama would be here for CHOGM, Enill said he was not aware of this, but he did say that because of the short time frame, the president of China would not be coming to T&T this week.

Enill also commented on anti-smelter protests taking place and the request by environmental activist Dr Wayne Kublalsingh for Government’s economic report on the viability of the Alutrint smelter project. He said the group should not concern itself with economic issues of the smelter.

He said he provided Kublalsingh with what was available on the smelter. This, he said, included a report from a three-day seminar, which showed there were no issues with the health and environmental aspects of the project, and a report done by the University of the West Indies that supported the smelter project going forward.

’Now, as it relates to those issues, I thought that he needed to have them because that was what needs to be available to him to make a determination on whether the smelter meets with Government’s policy.’

’The matter of the economic viability of the project and all of those are commercial arrangements the Government does not provide (information on) as it relates to the petrochemical sector, as it relates to the oil and gas sector, as it relates to all of those.’ Enill said the economics of the project was not an issue for a group of anti-smelter environmentalists but an issue that is a matter for the Government of Trinidad and Tobago.

Touching on the call by the People’s Democracy to shut down the country tomorrow and Tuesday to protest ill-governance by the PNM administration, Enill said, at this time, the people of T&T have a responsibility to boost the country’s productivity, and the two-day shut-down does not help in this regard.

The People’s Democracy is a conglomeration of unions, civic groups and non-governmental organisations. -CB(Trinidad Express)