CHATHAM residents are vowing to take their smelter protest to the bitter end.

Only a handful of the Chatham/Cap-de-Ville Protest Group made the long trek to Port of Spain yesterday, to listen in on the Joint Select Committee’s (JSC) enquiry into the proposed smelter plants.

Committee Chair, Independent Senator Mary King had to remind the energy representatives on a number of occasions that they were under the full purview of the JSC and that they must answer all questions put to them, or face contempt of Parliament.

That came as both Alutrint’s Chairman Anthony Chan Tack and Managing Director Renda Butler declined to discuss what they called “sensitive and confidential” issues concerning the Memorandum of Understanding.

FITZROY BEACHE: “Big
boys must account to
the people.”

It was then explained to both men that they could answer the questions in an in camera sitting of the Committee.

But Chatham/Cap-de-Ville Protest Group president Fitzroy Beache wasn’t impressed.

“It wasn’t a straightforward answer,” he says, “they keeping t’ing in secret … they not telling us what price the gas is being sold to the smelter,” he says.

“The only reason has to be that they are getting the gas for free.

“Why everything has to be so ‘confidential’?

“They are the ones coming into our country to build this massive smelter.

“You think this kinda secrecy would take place if, for instance, the plant was being built in the US?

“They are in our country and they are not being up front and truthful.”

Beache says there are too many unanswered questions, especially when it comes to the potential contamination of the ground water that supplies the entire peninsula.

“The struggle is still on … the pressure is still on, and we will keep up the protest as necessary because we want answers.

“They messing with our water …

“We get our water from the ground where they going to build the smelter.

“Best they mix Gramoxone and give us to drink … the only difference is that we will die faster that way.

“We are not against industry.

“Why didn’t they decide to build a recycling plant there instead?

“So much plastic and bottles being thrown away.

“But no, they realise that they wouldn’t make the kind of money in recycling that the smelter would.”

Beache says despite Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s criticism of the smelter protest, his group is prepared to go down fighting.

“Remember they are coming to our community, and we will do what we have to do … we have to get them to talk, by any means necessary.

“We are prepared to strike, we prepared to block the roads, we prepared to tie ourselves to trees, we prepared to lie down in front tractor!

“They will have to account to we, the people.”