Community, former workers hopeful steel plant revival will boost economic activity

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

Af­ter a decade of in­ac­tiv­i­ty, re­fur­bish­ment of the for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal Steel Plant is un­der­way, rais­ing hopes among res­i­dents and small busi­ness own­ers that its re­vival will bring more jobs and re­newed eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty to the area.

These sen­ti­ments were ex­pressed to Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a vis­it to the com­mu­ni­ty of Cal­i­for­nia yes­ter­day, one day af­ter the gates to the plant were of­fi­cial­ly re­opened fol­low­ing the ac­qui­si­tion by US-based Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion, through lo­cal sub­sidiary Ibis Steel Com­pa­ny. High-rank­ing diplo­mat­ic and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing US Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau, at­tend­ed the rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny to of­fi­cial­ly be­gin re­fur­bish­ment work at the site. The US$750 mil­lion in­vest­ment is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate up to 1,000 per­ma­nent jobs.

For for­mer work­ers of the plant, the de­vel­op­ment is es­pe­cial­ly sig­nif­i­cant, bring­ing back mem­o­ries of a fa­cil­i­ty that once pro­vid­ed jobs for hun­dreds of peo­ple.

One for­mer con­tract work­er, Ra­jku­mar Seer­am, said he is hap­py to see the plant be­ing re­opened and hopes it will bring much-need­ed em­ploy­ment back to the area. “I used to work with a con­trac­tor many years ago, and when things were get­ting tougher, I had to leave the work and look for em­ploy­ment else­where. So I’m hap­py right now; they’re go­ing to open back the mill and in the area, which is Point Lisas, Cal­i­for­nia, we will live again be­cause right now things are slow in the area, work is not much like be­fore, but now this mill is open. A lot of guys who work in the mill is from this area, and they will very wel­come that mill open­ing back again.” Small busi­ness own­ers near­by are al­so ex­pect­ing the plant’s restart to boost their liveli­hoods.

For Vian­dra Chat­ter­goon, own­er of An­na’s Roti Shop, more work­ers and ac­tiv­i­ty in the area should trans­late in­to in­creased sales.

“I have a roti shop, so the sales ob­vi­ous­ly go­ing to in­crease, not for me on­ly but all the oth­er food busi­ness­es in the area,” she said.

Wendy Pram­sook, whose fam­i­ly op­er­ates Natara­ja Dou­bles, a va­ri­ety store and veg­etable stall near­by, al­so ex­pects the in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty to bring more cus­tomers and op­por­tu­ni­ties for small busi­ness­es.

“Yes, it will (boost sales) be­cause some­times peo­ple just come and ask for dif­fer­ent va­ri­ety of food, dif­fer­ent stuff and we try our best to fa­cil­i­tate every­body whichev­er way we can, and they could come and they could get some­thing to eat com­fort­able. They could go and tell a friend and come back the next day, and every­body will be hap­py at the end of the day,” said Pram­sook.

Mar­cel­lo Gon­za­les, own­er of Vi­tal Ital, a healthy bev­er­age busi­ness, who sells at the Point Lisas round­about, said the re­turn of the plant will give his busi­ness and the com­mu­ni­ty an ad­di­tion­al boost. “So the peo­ple in the area should ben­e­fit from all this in­dus­try and mon­ey-mak­ing in the area, and they should be the first pref­er­ence to al­so get the jobs. But for me, my busi­ness is do­ing very good as it is here, nor­mal, but if we have more peo­ple com­ing to the plant, my busi­ness will def­i­nite­ly do much bet­ter.”

Fol­low­ing Arcelor­Mit­tal’s clo­sure in 2016, an es­ti­mat­ed 644 work­ers were dis­placed. Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, the open­ing of the fa­cil­i­ty marks a new chap­ter for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­dus­tri­al sec­tor, one that will cre­ate sus­tain­able jobs, stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and po­si­tion the coun­try as a sup­pli­er of vana­di­um, a crit­i­cal met­al used in the glob­al steel and en­er­gy in­dus­tries.