Plain Talk from Skratchy

In the Christmas address, the Prime Minister announced that the plans for an industrial estate in the Cedros Peninsula at Chatham had been cancelled. Not just no smelter, but no industrial estate at all for Chatham.

The Prime Minister went on to announce that Aluminum Industry will instead be established at an at this point non existent 'offshore industrial island' further north on the island.
This announcement comes on the heels of a lawsuit filed against the government early in the week demanding an immediate halt to the industrial development of the Chatham area. This week, the Trinidad government also announced that there was 'no gas available' to sell to Jamaica for the expansion of Alcoa's Jamalco Aluminum refinery there.

Of course, everybody in the Peninsula is very happy about the unexpected news. We are hoping there will be confirmation from the EMA later this week that all applications for an industrial estate, port and the aluminum smelter indeed have been withdrawn.
People are cautiously optimistic and there are many questions: Will Alcoa be out of the picture? Will there really be an 'offshore industrial island' so close to Trinidad's second largest city? What will happen to the third aluminum smelter that was recently announced? Do we need all this in writing to believe it?

In the meantime, it seems like the unique rainforests and the people of the Cedros Peninsula are safe for now and it is now time to concentrate on the Cedros Development Plan to establish the kind of development we all want to see here. You can find the link to the Cedros Development Plan here:
http://www.therepublicofcedros.org/cedrosplan.html