Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP) yes­ter­day sus­pend­ed more work­ers it deemed to be in­volved in an il­le­gal with­hold­ing of ser­vices last week.How­ev­er, the State-owned com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to as­sure the pub­lic that fu­el de­liv­ery will con­tin­ue un­in­ter­rupt­ed."NP wish­es to ad­vise the pub­lic that ad­di­tion­al em­ploy­ees re­ceived let­ters of sus­pen­sion with pay to­day Au­gust 19 2013," a re­lease from the com­pa­ny said.The ac­tion, the com­pa­ny added, was tak­en be­cause the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) had "en­gaged its mem­bers in an il­le­gal work stop­page at NP's gantries" on Au­gust 13, 14 and 15."As a re­sult, on Fri­day Au­gust 16 2013, based on ini­tial re­ports, the com­pa­ny sus­pend­ed over forty staff mem­bers with pay."How­ev­er, as our in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue, ad­di­tion­al em­ploy­ees have now been sus­pend­ed with pay, all pend­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion."

The first batch of em­ploy­ees, num­ber­ing over 40, were sus­pend­ed on Fri­day af­ter three days of work stop­pages.The union rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the work­ers had claimed they walked out of NP's Sea Lots head of­fice in Port-of-Spain be­cause they were out­raged over an al­leged at­tempt by man­age­ment to pri­va­tise the com­pa­ny.The work­ers claimed they were be­ing asked to train peo­ple whom they be­lieved would even­tu­al­ly re­place them on the job. They claimed as a re­sult of their protest over 60 work­ers were sus­pend­ed.

The com­pa­ny sub­se­quent­ly de­nied these claims, say­ing there was no in­ten­tion to pri­va­tise the com­pa­ny and that train­ing the work­ers re­ferred to was part of a nor­mal ex­er­cise meant to train ex­ist­ing em­ploy­ees.Yes­ter­day, the com­pa­ny said it re­mained fo­cussed on en­sur­ing the time­ly de­liv­ery of fu­el to its ser­vice sta­tion net­work, which in­cludes air­ports in T&T, in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers, like the Port Au­thor­i­ty and Pow­er­gen, all hos­pi­tals and all the pro­tec­tive ser­vices."We have been able to main­tain a non-dis­rupt­ed op­er­a­tion in spite of the un­law­ful work stop­page ini­ti­at­ed by the OW­TU last week and con­tin­ue to put things in place to en­sure its con­ti­nu­ity."Ef­forts to reach OW­TU pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get were un­suc­cess­ful yes­ter­day as calls to his cell phone went unan­swered.