Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley says the quality of life of citizens in T&T is in great danger and the Government will be brutally honest with citizens to save them from what was pending.
He also said he would address the nation on the matter soon. Speaking at yesterday’s launch of Women’s Institute for Alternative Development (WINAD) report of its Women’s Conservations Caravan: Making Our Voice Count, at the Rotunda, First Citizens Bank, Queen’s Park East, Rowley said he was disturbed about a pending situation involving the United States with respect to its self-imposed embargo on exporting hydrocarbons.
The PM said he took note of moves by the Democratic and Republican parties in the US to agree “to lift the embargo on the US to allow it to become an exporter of hydrocarbons.”
Rowley said if that was to happen the market was going to change in a fundamental way as commodity prices continued to decline.
“We have always been a seller and if one of our main markets becomes a seller the thing would have changed,” he added.
He said that matter was expected to be determined in the next few days, adding that T&T could only wait and see the outcome as “we are not influencing it.”
Rowley said he would await the reaction of one of the world’s leading oil exporters, Saudi Arabia, on the matter.
“Do they hold the line and continue to depress the price hoping to knock the US out of the market to maintain their market share or do they give in. We don’t know. We are just there being buffeted in the wind.
“So we are required to be honest about our circumstances and to take the necessary steps to rectify it. And in that context I intend to address this nation in the near future to address this matter about being honest about our circumstances,” he added.
The PM said the existing conditions required that citizens adopt the right kind of behaviour. Rowley used the doctor and patient analogy to stress the need to be honest, saying “some medicines require absolute honesty or your life might depend on it.”
He said citizens must be honest and determine what they could afford under the existing circumstances, adding they must at least do what they can to preserve “the quality of life that we enjoy now.”
He stressed: “That quality of life is in great danger if we don’t behave properly and that is the honesty I talk about.
“As the Government, we intend to be brutally honest with the people of T&T to make sure we do what is going to save us from what is pending.”
Earlier, Rowley heard the executive director of WINAD tell the launch that the most serious problem affecting women in T&T was violence.
Burt Rowley said: “Every time you hear some bad news about somebody being killed in T&T, very frequently it is a male and very often it happens when he was liming somewhere.
“I don’t usually hear about women liming anywhere and being part of the statistics...and the reason might very well be it is because they are the ones with their shoulders to the wheel holding us together as a nation.”