Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Hun­dreds of peo­ple af­fect­ed by a mas­sive oil spill in the Gulf of Paria have start­ed re­ceiv­ing so­cial and psy­choso­cial sup­port, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh has said. Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter col­lect­ing 100 ham­pers for his con­stituents at the Preysal Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Thurs­day, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said, "We have re­spond­ed to the oil spill and we have a dis­as­ter re­sponse team which is ad­dress­ing the sit­u­a­tion."

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said many of the res­i­dents were still in shock at the ex­tent of the spill, which has trav­elled from Pointe-a-Pierre to Chatham over the past week, "So­cial and psy­choso­cial sup­port have been giv­en to them. In these dis­as­ters peo­ple are re­al­ly mor­ti­fied (sic) and they tend to be in a bit of shock," Ra­mad­hars­ingh said. "I don't know what the ex­tent of the im­pact is but we will eval­u­ate and as­sess and give what­ev­er sup­port or rec­om­men­da­tions we can give for oth­er min­istries to in­ter­vene."

He said the Min­istry of En­er­gy and Petrotrin have been work­ing to­geth­er to con­tain the spill. Mean­while, Petrotrin's head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Gillian Fri­day, said Petrotrin had re­ceived re­ports of fish­er­men's boats be­ing con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with oil at Cof­fee Beach, La Brea, on Wednes­day. She said Petrotrin's Op­er­a­tions, Se­cu­ri­ty and Health Safe­ty and En­vi­ron­ment per­son­nel re­spond­ed by ini­ti­at­ing con­tain­ment and clean-up ef­forts.

Three con­trac­tors were hired and used heavy me­chan­i­cal and oth­er equip­ment to clean up the af­fect­ed area. A fourth con­trac­tor with a crew of 25 com­mu­ni­ty per­son­nel trained in oil spill re­sponse from the La Brea area was al­so mo­bilised. She said en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly shore­line and man­grove-clean­ing sol­vents, as well as oil-spill sor­bent ma­te­ri­als, were be­ing used.

"The reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs, have been in­formed and are cur­rent­ly work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Petrotrin in the cleanup ex­er­cise," Fri­day said. "Sur­veil­lance of con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed ar­eas has been con­duct­ed, both by air and by sea, to de­ter­mine the na­ture and ex­tent of the spill. Oil has al­so been ob­served at Pt Co­coa Beach at Chatham and clean-up is cur­rent­ly in progress," she added.

Res­i­dents re­quir­ing med­ical at­ten­tion were treat­ed at the ad­ja­cent Lake As­phalt fa­cil­i­ty in Brighton. Fri­day al­so said trained per­son­nel from Petrotrin Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme Ser­vices have been made avail­able to res­i­dents.

The source of the spill has not been de­ter­mined and the as­sis­tance of the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs is be­ing utilised to "fin­ger­print" the oil to as­cer­tain the source. Fri­day said Petrotrin would con­tin­ue to en­sure that the clean-up ex­er­cise was done in a way that min­imised the im­pact on res­i­dents, sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties and the en­vi­ron­ment.