Kevon Felmine

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing an in­ci­dent in which one of the protest­ing work­ers of Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL) was knocked down by the shut­tle trans­port­ing em­ploy­ees in­to the com­pa­ny's plant at Clax­ton Bay. Rob­bie Mooti­lal 47, a truck dri­ver at the com­pa­ny, was tak­en to the Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal in Pointe-a-Pierre, af­ter a shut­tle bus struck him. A re­port said Mooti­lal's back was in­jured. Last month, TCL pro­vid­ed shut­tle ser­vices and height­ened se­cu­ri­ty at the com­pound, claim­ing protest­ing work­ers had en­gaged in acts of ter­ror­ism against em­ploy­ees.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred around 7.21 am yes­ter­day while protest­ing work­ers were in­volved in the strike ac­tion out­side TCL's com­pound. Branch pres­i­dent of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) Lawrence Re­naud claimed the bus dri­ver com­mit­ted a de­lib­er­ate act and might have been fol­low­ing the in­struc­tions of TCL's man­age­ment. Re­naud said work­ers con­verged at the gates be­fore po­lice and se­cu­ri­ty ar­rived with non-strik­ing em­ploy­ees. Mooti­lal was tak­en to hos­pi­tal by a TCL am­bu­lance. He re­turned to the camp hours af­ter wear­ing a neck brace.