An­na-Lisa Paul

There's a call for an of­fi­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a pow­er out­age yes­ter­day at the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs, South Quay, Port-of-Spain. The out­age left two em­ploy­ees trapped in an el­e­va­tor for more than half an hour af­ter the gen­er­a­tor failed to ac­ti­vate be­cause there was no oil in it.

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian short­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent in­volv­ing the em­ploy­ees around 2 pm, Du Marouis Hors­ley ex­pressed out­rage over the chaos that re­sult­ed as hun­dreds of work­ers and mem­bers of the pub­lic rushed to leave the build­ing af­ter the fire alarm went off. Point­ing to one ex­it on the ground floor, Hors­ley said while no one was in­jured, "It could have been much worse than it was."

Al­so caught in the melee was an el­der­ly woman who had to be as­sist­ed by staff since the build­ing was not de­signed for the hand­i­capped or dif­fer­ent­ly able. While many min­istry work­ers lined the pave­ment out­side the build­ing, un­aware of the muster point where they were sup­posed to gath­er dur­ing such an emer­gency, oth­ers opt­ed to leave.

The trapped work­ers in the el­e­va­tor were res­cued by of­fi­cers from the Wright­son Road Fire Sta­tion around 2.40 pm. Of­fi­cials said they had to use a winch as the el­e­va­tor had be­come stuck be­tween two floors. The T&T Guardian learnt that the work­ers, who were trau­ma­tised by the in­ci­dent, were treat­ed and lat­er sent home.

De­mand­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Hors­ley said, "I am mak­ing a clar­i­on call for the Min­istry of Labour to de­ter­mine if this build­ing is OS­HA-com­pli­ant as there are se­ri­ous is­sues re­lat­ing to safe­ty at play here. What if some­one was claus­tro­pho­bic? "And what about the emer­gency ex­its? This is a four-storey build­ing and there are hun­dreds of peo­ple in here dai­ly. What would hap­pen if there was a fire or some­thing more se­ri­ous?"

Hors­ley said it could just have eas­i­ly been Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har or a preg­nant woman who was stuck in the el­e­va­tor. Urg­ing staff and vis­i­tors not to en­ter the build­ing un­til it was de­clared safe by the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty, Hors­ley said, "This has noth­ing to do with one po­lit­i­cal par­ty. It is a mat­ter of hu­man lives be­ing placed at risk."

Al­so caught in the chaos was David Law, re­search of­fi­cer to the Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Win­ston Pe­ters. "I am not dis­put­ing what hap­pened here to­day, and the is­sues of OS­HA com­pli­ance have come in­to play." Ac­knowl­edg­ing that it was an old build­ing, Law said, "I am un­sure if there are emer­gency sup­port sys­tems in place, and a safe­ty au­dit should be done on most pub­lic build­ings."

De­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as "se­ri­ous", Law said both em­ploy­ees and vis­i­tors should be guar­an­teed a greater lev­el of safe­ty. When con­tact­ed, a se­nior OS­HA of­fi­cial ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment over the in­ci­dent. Ask­ing that his name not be used, he ad­vised a work­er or mem­ber of the pub­lic to file a com­plaint so that an of­fi­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tion could be done. He re­vealed there's an OS­HA hot­line, 624-OS­HA, which can al­so be used by peo­ple re­port­ing in­ci­dents.