Brent Zephyrine

Among the 22 Petrotrin em­ploy­ees cur­rent­ly un­der foren­sic probe for al­leged­ly fal­si­fy­ing their cre­den­tials in or­der to gain em­ploy­ment with the com­pa­ny, four of them have since been fired. A spokesman for the state-owned en­ter­prise con­firmed that the for­mer em­ploy­ees, three of them whose names were re­vealed, served with­in the de­part­ments of fire, re­fin­ery main­te­nance as well as in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The spokesman added that of the four fired em­ploy­ees, two fire of­fi­cers were re­lieved of their re­spec­tive posts af­ter it was dis­cov­ered they had sub­mit­ted bo­gus Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) cer­tifi­cates, with one al­leged sub­mis­sion trac­ing back as far as 22 years ago. While Petrotrin's fire chief Michael Charles "was not able to con­firm" whether peo­ple from with­in his de­part­ment were found guilty of such a breach, he cit­ed how­ev­er that "a full CXC cer­tifi­cate" was among the list of pre­req­ui­sites nec­es­sary to be­come a fire of­fi­cer in the com­pa­ny. A re­fin­ery main­te­nance op­er­a­tor, who al­leged­ly fal­si­fied a City and Guilds' tech­ni­cian's diplo­ma in en­gi­neer­ing, has al­so been iden­ti­fied in the lot.

Near­ly two months ago (April 21), in a sto­ry re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly by the T&T Guardian, a source re­vealed that 22 of Petrotrin's em­ploy­ees were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the Fraud Squad for al­leged­ly sub­mit­ting false qual­i­fi­ca­tions ei­ther to gain em­ploy­ment or en­hance their ca­reers with­in the oil-based com­pa­ny. It was al­so re­port­ed that Petrotrin had writ­ten to sev­er­al "ex­am­i­na­tion bod­ies" re­quest­ing that they "ver­i­fy the cre­den­tials of these em­ploy­ees." Ac­cord­ing to the source, one such en­quiry in­to a City and Guilds' cer­tifi­cate, proved that one em­ploy­ee (al­lud­ed to ear­li­er) had com­plete­ly fal­si­fied his aca­d­e­m­ic cre­den­tials.

The source, who iden­ti­fied both an un­cle and nephew duo in the al­leged fraud ring, said Petrotrin was "re­fus­ing to ac­cept" the res­ig­na­tion of some of these "guilty" em­ploy­ees who feared the po­ten­tial loss of com­pa­ny ben­e­fits due to ter­mi­na­tion.

Con­tact­ed on Fri­day, Petrotrin's cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Gillian Fri­day said she was not aware of any such de­vel­op­ment and would have to "dou­ble-check" that. She added: "I can't con­firm that at this point in time." The spokesman said the Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU), one of the com­pa­ny's ma­jor col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing bod­ies, had in­ter­vened on be­half of one of the fire of­fi­cers fac­ing ter­mi­na­tion for sus­pect­ed CXC fraud. Pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the OW­TU An­cil Ro­get told Sun­day Guardian that when an em­ploy­ee is "ter­mi­nat­ed" he los­es all his ben­e­fits save for "last month's pay and any con­tri­bu­tion he would have made to pen­sion ben­e­fits if he was un­der the plan."

In an ex­clu­sive April in­ter­view in­to the al­leged fal­si­fi­ca­tion of doc­u­ments by Petrotrin em­ploy­ees, he has said "the union will not sup­port any fal­si­fi­ca­tion of doc­u­ments or pa­pers in or­der to se­cure em­ploy­ment in Petrotrin." When asked to re­spond to re­ports that the OW­TU un­suc­cess­ful­ly tried to have the se­nior em­ploy­ee (with over 20 years ser­vice) "de­part" the com­pa­ny with all of his ben­e­fits, Ro­get said such was not the case and that he "would part com­pa­ny with any­body who did a fraud­u­lent act." He said: "That (sub­mit­ting false cre­den­tials) is a crim­i­nal act and should be in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the po­lice. "It is a se­ri­ous is­sue and we will not be in­volved in that at all. "I do not know that we would sup­port a work­er who did a fraud­u­lent act," Ro­get added.+

'Shake­down of HR per­son­nel com­ing'

An­oth­er spokesman hint­ed that there was "plen­ty more to come" with re­gard to foren­sic probes such as these since moves were tak­ing place to ini­ti­ate a "new project" that will wit­ness a to­tal shake­down of Petrotrin's hu­man re­sources (HR) per­son­nel. "There is a new project com­ing to dig up every­body's file (in the com­pa­ny) so that there will be a com­plete over­haul of HR and every em­ploy­ee will be un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion un­til they find some in­crim­i­na­to­ry ev­i­dence," the source said. He added:"The HR de­part­ment was not do­ing what it was sup­posed to be do­ing in the first place. "You can­not take it for grant­ed that when an em­ploy­ee sub­mits doc­u­ments (with­out of­fi­cial tran­scripts), they are au­then­tic. "This is ter­ri­ble and casts a very bad shad­ow over man­age­ment."

While he could not con­firm the na­ture or ex­tent of the 22 fal­si­fi­ca­tions al­leged (whether they be par­tial­ly, com­plete­ly or oth­er­wise doc­tored), the source added that HR may have to re­vis­it all of its hir­ing pro­ce­dures", with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on "ex­ten­sive en­quiries in­to the va­lid­i­ty of doc­u­ments be­ing sub­mit­ted." The Sun­day Guardian has learnt that the 22 al­leged per­pe­tra­tors are pre­dom­i­nant­ly male and of a par­tic­u­lar eth­nic­i­ty.