Dyer-Griffith warns against hysteria over falling oil price December 22, 2014 “Political miscreants” are attempting to create an atmosphere of panic amongst the public with regard to the current fall in petroleum prices, Congress of the People (COP) chairman Nicole Dyer-Griffith said in a news release yesterday. Statements by Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union president Ancel Roget and others, made publicly, were contributing to this panic and misrepresenting facts, she said. “Last week, Ancel Roget, masking his party political rhetoric behind his union shirt, demanded that the country’s Stabilisation Fund must not be used as part of measures to address the oil price challenges,” Dyer-Griffith said. This, despite the fact that no statement indicating such use has come from the Finance Minister or government.” “On Friday last, several PNM ‘ideologues’ spent hours on the radio calling on Government to make “deep and targeted cuts” and ‘do it now’. They liberally described the situation as ‘crisis’. One of them even went back in time to blame the public servants’ pay increase in 1981 for the country’s difficulties due to the oil price plunge that occurred later in that decade.” “Not to be outdone, their new-found political ally, a former attorney-general, chimed in on Friday afternoon, freely misrepresenting facts, to demand that the Prime Minister must spend all her time ‘dealing with crime, particularly murders’. Perhaps, he forgot that earlier this week one newspaper published murder tolls which show that in every year of the life of this regime that figure has never reached the level it was in 2009.” Dyer-Griffith said while there were implications of falling oil prices to Trinidad and Tobago, it was unacceptable for persons to “engage in alarmist attempts to whip up hysteria and panic, rather than join in a national effort to address a national issue.” “What is needed is clinical analysis of what is happening to petroleum prices and the effects on our economy and budget and appropriate measured steps must be taken to address the effects in a planned and deliberate manner,” she said.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 15:41:28 +0000
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