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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

End to NP impasse in sight as officials meet

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20110524

An end to the in­dus­tri­al im­passe at Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP) was in sight yes­ter­day as man­age­ment and union of­fi­cials held marathon talks to ar­rive at an am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tion. Up to late yes­ter­day, NP's act­ing CEO Ra­jkapoor Ram­lochan and his eight-mem­ber team were meet­ing with An­cel Ro­get, pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) and his ex­ec­u­tive to end the protest which re­sult­ed in a gas short­age through­out the coun­try. NP work­ers downed tools on Fri­day in protest over the state of ne­go­ti­a­tions, as well as health and safe­ty is­sues, re­sult­ing in long lines at gas sta­tions and pan­ic-buy­ing.

NP said, how­ev­er, that fu­el dis­tri­b­u­tion con­tin­ued yes­ter­day, with al­most 80 loads of fu­el leav­ing the Sea Lots com­pound. Ro­get con­firmed yes­ter­day evening they were close to set­tling. He said the union want­ed a com­plete and thor­ough HSE au­dit of all con­trac­tors' trucks and its em­ploy­ees. He said they must be held to the same strin­gent stan­dards to which NP em­ploy­ees and their ve­hi­cles were be­ing held. "On the is­sue of health and safe­ty, we have reached the point of ham­mer­ing out the terms of set­tle­ment. Once it con­forms to what we re­quire, it will be con­densed in­to writ­ing be­fore we can sign off on that and work­ers can re­sume their du­ties," he added.

Ro­get said the health and safe­ty is­sues were not on­ly con­fined to the Sea Lots op­er­a­tions but af­fect­ed work­ers at Pi­ar­co, To­ba­go and the Pointe-a-Pierre bond. He said their ac­tion may in­con­ve­nience the mo­tor­ing pub­lic but that was a bur­den they would have to bear to en­sure safe op­er­a­tions at NP. Yes­ter­day, work at the Petrotrin Pointe-a-Pierre bond was sus­pend­ed while a joint union and man­age­ment team in­ves­ti­gat­ed and cor­rect­ed sev­er­al health and safe­ty is­sues. Unipet trucks were, how­ev­er, fill­ing from a sta­tion out­side the bond. This ac­tion dis­rupt­ed the fill­ing of NP tankers with gas and diesel for de­liv­ery to gas sta­tions, which re­sult­ed in an­oth­er day of pan­ic-buy­ing and long lines at gas sta­tions. OW­TU branch pres­i­dent at Petrotrin Anil Bah­gowtie de­nied re­ports the bond work­ers had aban­doned their jobs.

He ex­plained that the HSE is­sues oc­curred on Mon­day morn­ing when work­ers who last worked on Sat­ur­day, turned up for du­ty and re­alised the bond was used on Sun­day. He said be­cause of the NP im­passe, work­ers came out to work on Sat­ur­day to en­sure fu­el was trans­port­ed to the gas sta­tions but rest­ed on Sun­day, their off day. He added: "There had to be a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion by a joint man­age­ment union team to ver­i­fy the in­stal­la­tions were fit for work. "The work­ers did not op­er­ate it yes­ter­day (Sun­day). It seemed as though the con­trac­tors op­er­at­ed it them­selves. "When they (bond work­ers) came this morn­ing (Mon­day), they saw some ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and brought it to the at­ten­tion of the com­pa­ny be­cause if some­thing went wrong, they should not be held ac­count­able."


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