Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

The head of­fice of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty (Os­ha) has been shut down to fa­cil­i­tate up­grade works. The agency's chief in­spec­tor, Jef­frey Milling­ton gave the di­rec­tive on Thurs­day, fol­low­ing an emer­gency meet­ing held at the Dun­can Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice to dis­cuss health and safe­ty con­cerns.

As a re­sult, Os­ha em­ploy­ees are not al­lowed to ac­cess the build­ing un­til af­ter Ju­ly 20. The di­rec­tive fol­lows a se­ries of Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cles high­light­ing the em­ploy­ees' safe­ty con­cerns. On­ly last week an at­tempt was made to si­lence work­ers for ex­pos­ing the flawed and un­safe prac­tices at the state en­ter­prise.

Warn­ing let­ters were dis­trib­uted to var­i­ous heads of de­part­ments and em­ploy­ees last week, in­struct­ing them to de­sist from such ac­tions. The let­ters were is­sued by Prof An­tho­ny Joseph-the agency's ad­min­is­tra­tive con­sul­tant who al­so wears the hat of chief ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, a po­si­tion that does not ex­ist on the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al chart of Os­ha. Ac­cord­ing to the guide­lines of con­tract em­ploy­ment, the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary is the sig­na­to­ry to the con­tract.

Sec­tion A (i) of the guide­lines states: "The par­ties to the agree­ment shall be the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the ap­pro­pri­ate min­istry/head of de­part­ment, head of statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ty and the per­son en­gaged." How­ev­er, in di­rect vi­o­la­tion of the guide­lines, Joseph, who was hired as the agency's ad­min­is­tra­tive con­sul­tant, is­sued the warn­ing let­ters last week.

Joseph had tak­en is­sue with let­ters sent to per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Carl Fran­cis on May 24 and 31, out­lin­ing is­sues af­fect­ing Os­ha. Con­tents of the let­ter stat­ed, "Send­ing cor­re­spon­dence di­rect­ly to mem­bers of the au­thor­i­ty was ab­solute­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate. In ad­di­tion, us­ing the re­sources of the agency for per­son­al use is un­eth­i­cal and an abuse of priv­i­leges as se­nior mem­bers of the agency."

Stat­ing that all em­ploy­ees are to ad­here to the pro­fes­sion­al con­duct and pro­to­col of the gov­ern­ment ser­vices and statu­to­ry bod­ies, Joseph fur­ther stat­ed, "You are to chan­nel all cor­re­spon­dence re­lat­ed to the agency and the au­thor­i­ty through the head of the agency, or seek ap­proval from the chair­man to di­rect­ly send any cor­re­spon­dence to gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials." Sun­day Guardian learnt that up to yes­ter­day em­ploy­ees were weigh­ing their le­gal op­tions, claim­ing that Joseph was in di­rect vi­o­la­tion of the con­tract guide­lines.

'We won't be muz­zled'

The em­ploy­ees who spoke to Sun­day Guardian un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty said any at­tempt to muz­zle them would be met with stiff op­po­si­tion. They claimed that Joseph had failed to ad­dress the safe­ty and health con­cerns raised. Sun­day Guardian ob­tained var­i­ous pieces of cor­re­spon­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate the em­ploy­ees' con­cerns.

Among them was an e-mail to Joseph and oth­er heads of de­part­ment, sent from re­search and sta­tis­ti­cal of­fi­cer, Kern Pariag, stress­ing the health haz­ard em­ploy­ees were fac­ing. Pariag stat­ed he was con­cerned about the risk em­ploy­ees were be­ing ex­posed to af­ter it was found that the air con­di­tion­ing unit, lo­cat­ed on the fifth floor of the build­ing, con­tained fi­bre­glass.

"In ad­di­tion to the cur­rent de­fi­cien­cies of the build­ing, this sit­u­a­tion is the newest one to come to my knowl­edge. Tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the prob­lems that has plagued the build­ing with­in re­cent times it is this par­tic­u­lar un­safe con­di­tion that has caused me the most wor­ry and fright.

"Af­ter re­search­ing the ill ef­fects of ex­po­sure to fi­bre­glass I am pet­ri­fied at the doc­u­ment­ed long-term ef­fects on heal­ing and well-be­ing," the e-mail stat­ed. Re­search has shown some fi­bres used to pro­duce fi­bre­glass are pos­si­ble hu­man can­cer-caus­ing agents.

Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Bank­ing In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union are ex­pect­ed to meet with the em­ploy­ees on Fri­day. At­tempts to con­tact Joseph or chair­man Car­ol Bha­gan-Khan proved fu­tile.