Sean Nero

Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) chair­man Susill Ramkissoon-Mark on Sat­ur­day an­nounced that the state-owned util­i­ty has in­tro­duced a whis­tle-blow­ing pol­i­cy to stamp out cor­rup­tion and im­prove its health, safe­ty and en­vi­ron­ment (HSE) record.

"In or­der to im­prove the cor­po­rate gov­er­nance frame­work in the com­mis­sion, the board in­tro­duced a whis­tle-blow­ing pol­i­cy which fa­cil­i­tates staff re­port­ing in con­fi­dence, con­cerns of wrong­do­ing with­in the com­mis­sion," she said.

"While we have made some strides in im­prov­ing cus­tomer ser­vice and HR process, we have not had sim­i­lar suc­cess in the sphere of HSE. We have, how­ev­er, been steadi­ly mov­ing for­ward with poli­cies, projects and pro­grammes to ad­dress these short­com­ings with the ob­jec­tive of achiev­ing a first class HSE cli­mate."

The chair­man was speak­ing at the com­pa­ny's 58th An­nu­al Em­ploy­ee Awards and Recog­ni­tion Cer­e­mo­ny at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad, Port-of-Spain. She as­sured em­ploy­ees and their fam­i­lies the job se­cu­ri­ty as well as health and safe­ty were top pri­or­i­ties at T&TEC.

In Au­gust the com­pa­ny was forced to go the de­fen­sive fol­low­ing claims of by the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union in the deaths of five em­ploy­ees over an eleven month pe­ri­od. OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get ac­cused T&TEC's se­nior man­age­ment of be­ing lax with safe­ty reg­u­la­tions and "col­lu­sion" with reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies and er­rant con­trac­tors.

T&TEC of­fi­cials said the util­i­ty made ex­ten­sive up­grades to its health and safe­ty rules and reg­u­la­tions in Jan­u­ary, in con­sul­ta­tion with the union and the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty.

Ramkissoon-Mark said: "The board had tak­en ini­tia­tives that would see the com­pul­so­ry re­port­ing of all near miss­es; com­ple­tion and full im­ple­men­ta­tion of the job haz­ard analy­sis; train­ing of staff at all dif­fer­ent lev­els; the in­tro­duc­tion of a su­per­vi­sor and train­ing course for all fore­men and A class (em­ploy­ees); and sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in job site in­spec­tion."

She added that she wants to im­prove the com­pa­ny's bot­tom line and that chal­lenges re­lat­ed to the com­pa­ny's fi­nan­cial con­straints and lim­i­ta­tions must be coun­ter­act­ed by im­prov­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy. Ramkissoon-Mark out­lined T&TEC's plan to em­bark on a "rig­or­ous" rev­enue col­lec­tion dri­ve, while slash­ing the over­time bill, as well as im­ple­ment­ing more strin­gent in-house in­ven­to­ry con­trol sys­tems to min­imise wastage.

She al­so spoke about a com­pre­hen­sive project man­age­ment sys­tem to avoid cost over­runs and vari­a­tions in ad­di­tion to en­sur­ing op­ti­mum gen­er­a­tion dis­patch for greater fu­el ef­fi­cien­cy. The T&TEC chair­man said an im­pend­ing cost cut­ting ex­er­cise would not im­pact on plan's to up­grade its ex­ist­ing fleet of ve­hi­cles, or ef­forts to im­prove ben­e­fit pack­ages to em­ploy­ees.

"Ten new aer­i­al lift trucks are ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered by year end. They will be out­fit­ted with GPS and on­line re­sponse sys­tems, which will al­low for faster re­sponse times be­cause of less ve­hi­cle break­downs, hot­line work and over­all im­proved cus­tomer ser­vice," she said

On the is­sue of emol­u­ments, Ramkissoon-Mark said a struc­tured pro­gramme for suc­ces­sion plan­ning as part of a re­vised hu­man re­source plan will take ef­fect at the util­i­ty when a new per­for­mance man­age­ment sys­tem linked to cost con­trol mea­sures is in­tro­duced.

She said a re­ward and recog­ni­tion pro­gramme will soon come on stream and the em­ploy­ee med­ical plan will be re­vised up­ward.