Yvonne Webb

Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Build­ing Code Com­mit­tee Shyankaran Lal­la has dis­missed re­ports from both the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and Plipde­co chair­man Ian Ather­ly that the pun­gent smell which en­veloped parts of Cou­va yes­ter­day and forced an evac­u­a­tion of work­ers and stu­dents was not a gas leak.

"My in­for­ma­tion is that there was a dis­rup­tion of a nat­ur­al gas line near the golf course," Lal­la said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day evening, two days af­ter he had raised con­cerns about the in­fra­struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty of the lines on the es­tate, main­te­nance, in­spec­tion and ad­her­ence to the OSH reg­u­la­tions. Lal­la called on the NGC, Ather­ly and Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh to tell the truth.

"It seems they have learnt noth­ing from the Petrotrin oil spill which is cost­ing that com­pa­ny mil­lions of dol­lars. When they cov­er up small in­ci­dents, then you will have the big ones," Lal­la cau­tioned. Ather­ly ini­tial­ly con­firmed yes­ter­day morn­ing that in a con­ver­sa­tion with In­dars­ingh he was told the scent had em­anat­ed from a ware­house at NGC. He said In­dars­ingh re­spond­ed to calls from schools, busi­ness peo­ple and res­i­dents about the strong gas scent which in­vad­ed his con­stituen­cy from ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Around mid-morn­ing, Ather­ly said he was in­formed by In­dars­ingh that the scent em­anat­ed from the spray­ing of mala­t­ian at the Sevil­la Club. "I have been li­ais­ing with Mr In­dars­ingh and first it was a gas leak in a ware­house and the sec­ond up­date is that it was caused by the spray­ing of mala­t­ian. I am await­ing a re­port from my HSE peo­ple, head­ed by Ger­rel Tra­boulay," Ather­ly said,.

In a third tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion around noon, Ather­ly con­firmed that his HSE staff, to­geth­er with the NGC HSE team toured the area from Bal­main to Mc Bean, where they checked every gas junc­tion in and out­side of the es­tate and noth­ing was found. "What they said they un­cov­ered was in fact a spray­ing ex­er­cise was be­ing con­duct­ed at the Sevil­la Club.

I was told chem­i­cals mala­t­ian and phos­pho­rous were used for this ex­er­cise and this is where the scent em­anat­ed from," Ather­ly said. He said the Sevil­la Club is op­er­at­ed by the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T. NGC, in a re­lease from cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion man­ag­er Char­maine Mo­hammed, al­so con­firmed that the scent was not due to a gas leak but from a spray­ing ex­er­cise. Lal­la re­ject­ed these ex­pla­na­tions, point­ing out that mala­t­ian was com­mon­ly used by Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed to spray crops in the past.

"So the peo­ple of Cou­va know the dif­fer­ence be­tween gas and mala­t­ian and what was em­a­nat­ing yes­ter­day was gas." He added: "My in­for­ma­tion came from peo­ple work­ing on the plant. A se­nior op­er­a­tor said the leak was up by the golf course and said 'they were keep­ing every­thing low.' "If there was no gas leak why then did the Sevil­la Club evac­u­ate, why did the At­lantic Plaza evac­u­ate. I would ad­vise Ather­ly, In­dars­ingh and NGC to do some fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions to safe­guard the lives of the peo­ple in that com­mu­ni­ty," Lal­la said.