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Friday, July 18, 2025

Osha PoS office a death trap

...in breach of fire, elec­tri­cal codes

by

20120623

The Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (Os­ha)-the state en­ti­ty re­spon­si­ble for safe­guard­ing the lives of work­ers-is a fire and elec­tri­cal death trap. In­spec­tions con­duct­ed by the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) and the Fire Ser­vice re­vealed that the agency's head of­fice lo­cat­ed at Dun­can Street Com­plex, In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain, is not in com­pli­ance with the stan­dard safe­ty reg­u­la­tions.

In fact, the elec­tri­cal re­port dat­ed Jan­u­ary 7, threat­ened to dis­con­nect the sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty if the agency failed to com­ply with spe­cif­ic reg­u­la­tions of the Na­tion­al Elec­tri­cal Code, and all oth­er rel­e­vant codes and rules adopt­ed and im­ple­ment­ed by the chief elec­tri­cal in­spec­tor.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 65 em­ploy­ees are now em­ployed at the agency's main of­fice. Over the last few months, em­ploy­ees have walked off the job com­plain­ing of un­suit­able work­ing con­di­tions. Re­cent­ly the em­ploy­ees were al­so forced to aban­don their jobs af­ter heavy show­ers flood­ed the ground floor of the build­ing.

The agency, which falls un­der the purview of Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod, has al­so been mired in con­tro­ver­sy re­gard­ing flawed hir­ing prac­tices. It was on­ly last week that man­age­ment is­sued an e-mail in­struct­ing staff to re­sume nor­mal work­ing hours, af­ter main­te­nance work was car­ried out on the air con­di­tion­ing.

Safe­ty haz­ard at Os­ha

How­ev­er, em­ploy­ees told Sun­day Guardian that the in­door air qual­i­ty tests re­main out­stand­ing, among oth­er safe­ty haz­ards list­ed in the re­ports. Some of the de­fects out­lined in the elec­tri­cal re­port, ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian, that have to be cor­rect­ed are:

• Pro­vide a sin­gle-line di­a­gram for the en­tire in­stal­la­tion, in­cor­po­rat­ing the tech­ni­cal da­ta on the fol­low­ing items:

(a) The ser­vice dis­con­nect.

(b) The ser­vice en­trance ca­bles/con­duc­tors.

(c) All oth­er feed­er ca­bles through­out the in­stal­la­tion.

• En­sure that all dis­tri­b­u­tion boards and elec­tri­cal pan­els are read­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble at all times.

• Pro­vide an equip­ment ground­ing con­duc­tor to each point of in­stal­la­tion and en­sure that the im­ped­ance from all points to the ground­ing elec­trode does not ex­ceed a re­sis­tance of one ohm (SI unit of elec­tri­cal re­sis­tance).

• Ter­mi­nate all loose con­duc­tors in an ap­proved man­ner.

• En­sure all elec­tri­cal pan­els that are not lo­cat­ed in close prox­im­i­ty to their source are equipped with a main dis­con­nect means.

• Re­move all flu­o­res­cent lamps present­ly at­tached to the air con­di­tion­ing duct­ing.

• In­stall cor­rect and de­tailed cir­cuit di­rec­to­ries on all dis­tri­b­u­tion boards and load cen­tre pan­els.

• Make vis­i­ble for in­spec­tion the in­stal­la­tion's ground­ing sys­tem and en­sure that its re­sis­tance is in keep­ing with Ar­ti­cle 250 of the Na­tion­al Elec­tric Code.

Dis­as­ter lurk­ing

With re­gards to the re­port is­sued by the fire ser­vice, the fol­low­ing de­fi­cien­cies were ob­served:

• No evac­u­a­tion plan;

• No sprin­kler sys­tem;

• In­cor­rect de­tec­tor;

• Some ex­tin­guish­ers need ser­vic­ing;

• Hose reel not func­tion­al;

• Hose reel in base­ment miss­ing;

• Emer­gency ex­it door locks not func­tion­al;

• Emer­gency stair­case cor­rod­ed;

• No emer­gency light­ing in cor­ri­dor and base­ment;

• In­suf­fi­cient ex­it and di­rec­tion­al signs;

• Elec­tri­cal wiring needs to be checked;

• Elec­tri­cal pan­el box in base­ment to be cov­ered;

• Poor house­keep­ing in the serv­er room on the fifth floor;

• Poor house­keep­ing in the elec­tri­cal rooms;

• Air con­di­tion­ing needs to be up­grad­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, among the rec­om­men­da­tions nec­es­sary to meet the safe­ty re­quire­ments of the Na­tion­al Fire Pro­tec­tion As­so­ci­a­tion (NF­PA) are:

• Portable fire ex­tin­guish­ers should be in­stalled, in­spect­ed and main­tained in ac­cor­dance with NF­PA;

• A ded­i­cat­ed wa­ter sup­ply of at least 30,000 gal­lons should be re­served for fire­fight­ing pur­pos­es;

• A fire pump should be in­stalled;

• A sprin­kler sys­tem should be pro­vid­ed through­out the build­ing;

• A sprin­kler con­trol valve and wa­ter flow de­vice should be pro­vid­ed on each floor.

Sun­day Guardian learnt that un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, an al­ter­na­tive site was lo­cat­ed at El So­cor­ro. The build­ing, which was un­der con­struc­tion, was due for com­ple­tion in No­vem­ber 2011. How­ev­er, well-placed sources told Sun­day Guardian that the present board, led by Dr Car­ol Bha­gan-Khan, found the lo­ca­tion to be un­suit­able.

"The rel­e­vant ap­provals to oc­cu­py the build­ing were be­ing sought, but the new board felt that El So­cor­ro was not a suit­able lo­ca­tion for the of­fices and can­celled that op­tion, leav­ing Os­ha to be­gin its search all over again," said an em­ploy­ee who spoke un­der con­di­tions of anonymi­ty. Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact the line min­is­ter and chair­man Bha­gan-Khan for a com­ment on the present sit­u­a­tion proved fu­tile.


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