Sascha Wil­son

Scores of off­shore work­ers re­mained strand­ed on off­shore plat­forms up to late yes­ter­day as Petrotrin work­ers en­gaged in a third day of protest ac­tion over out­stand­ing pay­ments.The T&T Guardian learnt that the off­shore work­ers were ex­pect­ed to re­turn home this week af­ter com­plet­ing their shifts on rigs lo­cat­ed off the south- west­ern penin­su­la.

How­ev­er, due to the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion which in­clud­ed the ma­rine sec­tion, the boats which trans­port the work­ers re­mained moored at main­land in­stal­la­tions."Right now the work­ers are just wait­ing to see what hap­pens. Some are on jack-up barges, while oth­ers are still on the plat­forms," a source said.

On Wednes­day, work­ers downed tools, bring­ing to a halt op­er­a­tions at Petrotrin's Trin­mar di­vi­sion, its Pe­nal/Bar­rack­pore, For­est Re­serve, Point Fortin and San­ta Flo­ra fa­cil­i­ties, as well as the Petrotrin port and bond.And de­spite a warn­ing by the com­pa­ny on Thurs­day that work­ers who stayed away from work would not be paid, work­ers still did not re­port for du­ty yes­ter­day.

When con­tact­ed, Bun­ny Ramb­ha­jan of Petrotrin's cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment said the sit­u­a­tion re­mained the same.She said the com­pa­ny's ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment led by pres­i­dent Khalid Has­sanali and the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) ex­ec­u­tive were locked in dis­cus­sions which be­gan since 10 am."It is hoped that an ap­pro­pri­ate res­o­lu­tion will be reached, for the ben­e­fit of the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al and na­tion­al in­ter­est," a news re­lease said.

Al­though few­er in num­ber, work­ers were still gath­ered out­side the com­pa­ny's ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ing at Pointe-a-Pierre Round­about yes­ter­day await­ing the out­come of the meet­ing.In a re­lease last night, Petrotrin said the com­pa­ny, in an ef­fort to en­sure its con­tin­ued op­er­a­tions, made an of­fer to pay an ad­vance to­wards the 2011-2012 vari­able pay. Petrotrin said this of­fer was re­ject­ed by the OW­TU.

NP: Don't pan­ic buy

Mean­while, there was no sign of pan­ic buy­ing or fu­el short­ages at sev­er­al gas sta­tions in San Fer­nan­do, Mara­bel­la and Dun­can Vil­lage, yes­ter­day.Ad­vis­ing against pan­ic buy­ing, the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny, in a me­dia re­lease, has as­sured that there were no prob­lems with the sup­ply of fu­el to its ser­vice sta­tion net­work.

OW­TU is al­so de­mand­ing that man­age­ment make act­ing and tem­po­rary em­ploy­ees per­ma­nent, up­grade Petrotrin's health plan and re-in­tro­duce its ap­pren­tice­ship pro­gramme.