Melis­sa Doughty

"What right does he have shut­ting down the coun­try?" Den­nisia Hull asked on Fri­day as she, along with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 14 oth­ers, stood in front of the Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fice, 67 Fred­er­ick Street, hop­ing to re­ceive long-await­ed pass­ports and oth­er doc­u­men­ta­tion.Sev­er­al peo­ple, some of whom had come from as far as Ma­yaro for re­newed pass­ports, were turned back on Fri­day as of­fices re­mained closed be­cause of health and safe­ty is­sues.

Ac­cord­ing to a May 12 news re­port, Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke had said two gov­ern­ment of­fices would be closed per week if there was no "mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion" on health and safe­ty is­sues.He was re­port­ed to have said that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,000 em­ploy­ees were be­ing af­fect­ed by health and safe­ty is­sues and half of them had "se­ri­ous" health con­cerns.

The Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fice, along with oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fices such as the Board of In­land Rev­enue-Col­lec­tion Di­vi­sion, Queen Street, have not been ful­ly func­tion­al for some time be­cause of health and safe­ty con­cerns, Duke said.On Fri­day some of the cus­tomers stand­ing in front of the build­ing claimed that work­ers, de­spite the "Closed Un­til Fur­ther No­tice" sign stuck on the door, were giv­ing pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to some peo­ple who were al­lowed to col­lect pass­ports while oth­ers were de­nied.

Own­er: Im­mi­gra­tion build­ing safe

How­ev­er, prop­er­ty man­ag­er and part own­er of the build­ing hous­ing the Im­mi­gra­tion of­fice, Al­fred Galy, said mis­in­for­ma­tion was be­ing dis­sem­i­nat­ed re­gard­ing the build­ing. "The build­ing suf­fers no bad air, no elec­tri­cal prob­lems. There is no el­e­va­tor prob­lem."He said the in­jury to the T&TEC work­er at the of­fice on Mon­day was as a re­sult of T&TEC's equip­ment."The prop­er­ty is ab­solute­ly safe. All fire equip­ment is in place ac­cord­ing to OSH re­quire­ments. There is no ba­sis for clos­ing down the build­ing," he said.

Galy said fire au­thor­i­ties had re­quest­ed that the build­ing's fire equip­ment be up­dat­ed, which was done about two weeks ago. The build­ing's en­gi­neer and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Tamar­co Ed­wards, said fire au­thor­i­ties then in­spect­ed the build­ing on June 14 and the build­ing's man­age­ment was await­ing an of­fi­cial let­ter of ap­proval from them by next week.

Doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed to the Sun­day Guardian by Ed­wards showed the re­quire­ments for the Im­mi­gra­tion Build­ing, in­clud­ing the main­te­nance of a man­u­al/au­to­mat­ic fire alarm/de­tec­tion sys­tem in­stalled in the build­ing; the in­stal­la­tion of call points "on the wall no less than 1.1 me­tres or greater than 1.37 me­tres from the floor lev­el," which should be ac­ces­si­ble, un­ob­struct­ed and vis­i­ble at all times.

Ad­di­tion­al de­tec­tors, the re­quire­ments said, should al­so be placed on the fourth floor, first floor, ground floor, and oth­ers. Heat de­tec­tors, it said, should be placed through­out the car park and the po­lice change room.

An­oth­er doc­u­ment dat­ed June 26 showed duct clean­ing and sani­ti­sa­tion work was car­ried out on the build­ing. It said an in­door air qual­i­ty test was done on June 10. Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ments, "...All tests tak­en show the build­ing is free from Sick Build­ing Syn­drome, and guar­an­teed for one year dur­ing nor­mal of­fice use."The tests were done by Peake Tech­nolo­gies.

A let­ter dat­ed June 6, ref­er­enced "sup­ply and in­stal­la­tion of life safe­ty sys­tem," said on the ground, first, sec­ond, third and fourth floors of the build­ing, equip­ment in­clud­ing heat de­tec­tors, emer­gency lights, ex­it signs, among oth­ers, were in­stalled in the build­ing.

Galy, when asked why the up­dates were not done pre­vi­ous­ly, said co­or­di­na­tion was nec­es­sary be­fore the up­dates could be done. "There is no rea­son why it was shut down in any event. The ba­sic fire equip­ment was there but they want­ed it up­dat­ed to meet the OSH re­quire­ments and all build­ings in town here don't meet OSH re­quire­ments. There was no mishap in this build­ing for the past 25 years," he said.Calls to PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke for fur­ther dis­cus­sion on the mat­ter went unan­swered.

Duke: Work­ers­get­ting sick

In a pre­vi­ous in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, how­ev­er, Duke said that work­ers in gov­ern­ment of­fices like the In­land Rev­enue–Col­lec­tion Di­vi­sion and Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fice were the vic­tims, since they were go­ing home with "bron­chi­tis and oth­er ill­ness­es."He said the PSA was work­ing to en­sure that such of­fices were op­er­a­tional again as well as they were hold­ing dis­cus­sions with the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure the of­fices were OSH com­pli­ant.