Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Work­ers shut down a large sec­tion of Petrotrin's Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery yes­ter­day, cit­ing man­age­ment's fail­ure to ad­dress safe­ty con­cerns. All of the plants at the re­fin­ery, ex­cept for the No 8 Top­ping Unit, ground to a halt for most of the day, while op­er­a­tions at the Ma­rine De­part­ment, the bond where fu­el is loaded, were ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed. Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al of the Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) An­cel Ro­get said a meet­ing was held with Petrotrin's man­age­ment from 10.30 am on Tues­day to dis­cuss health and safe­ty con­cerns at the bond and the port. How­ev­er, he said, talks broke down by noon.

Ro­get claimed Petrotrin's op­er­a­tions had been ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by a preva­lence of po­lit­i­cal ap­point­ments. He said sev­er­al va­can­cies still had not been filled and there was a heavy de­pen­dence on con­tract labour. "The re­fin­ery is not be­ing prop­er­ly man­aged, de­spite the fact that we have changed the board and the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man," Ro­get com­plained. "Va­can­cies are not be­ing filled. Once we con­tin­ue to be short of man­pow­er peo­ple are forced to work ex­ces­sive hours. They are burnt out and fa­tigued. The cur­few has put ad­di­tion­al stress on work­ers."

Ro­get added: "The re­fin­ery is a tick­ing time bomb. On the port there are safe­ty is­sues. At the ma­rine de­part­ment and the bond, there are sim­i­lar con­cerns. A year ago we sub­mit­ted a new man­age­ment struc­ture for the com­pa­ny and that has not been im­ple­ment­ed." He said the shut­down would con­tin­ue to­day as work­ers from the Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion de­part­ment were ex­pect­ed join the strug­gle. Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Gillian Fri­day promised to is­sue a state­ment on the mat­ter.