Tau­reef Mo­hammed

Some of the health and safe­ty is­sues iden­ti­fied in the wide­ly-pub­li­cised Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health re­port for the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion build­ing at 67 Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain, were ex­ag­ger­at­ed and false, ac­cord­ing to Al­fred Galy, prop­er­ty man­ag­er of the build­ing.He was seen yes­ter­day in and around the build­ing mak­ing checks with work­ers.In an in­ter­view af­ter­wards, Galy said: "There were a lot of mi­nor de­tails that were am­pli­fied. Os­ha has ex­ag­ger­at­ed this con­di­tion and I con­sid­er it very reck­less and un­pro­fes­sion­al."The build­ing is a func­tion­al build­ing. The el­e­va­tor is work­ing. There is no short­age of wa­ter. There are no elec­tri­cal prob­lems. The air was test­ed and it's prop­er air, bet­ter air than the air out­side."

Com­ment­ing on the is­sue of "hang­ing wires" through­out the build­ing, Galy said: "These were IT wires that could have been se­cured bet­ter but they gave the im­pres­sion that they were elec­tri­cal wires."On the is­sue of in­ad­e­quate ven­ti­la­tion, he said: "We have a re­port from Cariri that shows the air meets spec­i­fi­ca­tions so that is not cor­rect. That's an al­le­ga­tion."On the is­sue of the stair­case be­ing too nar­row, he said: "The stair­case met spec­i­fi­ca­tions at the time when the build­ing was built, which was 39 inch­es, and I think it's the same 39 inch­es now, and at the time it was ap­proved by town and coun­try and city coun­cil."On the is­sue of there be­ing no emer­gency light­ing, he said: "That is ab­solute­ly in­cor­rect and mis­lead­ing. New emer­gency light­ing was in­stalled two weeks ago and was test­ed by the fire au­thor­i­ties up to two days ago."I was nev­er even in­vit­ed when Os­ha con­duct­ed the in­spec­tion."

How­ev­er, Galy said there were some le­git­i­mate is­sues which were re­ceiv­ing his at­ten­tion. He said re­me­di­al work had start­ed on the build­ing and was ex­pect­ed to be 90 per cent com­plete with­in a week."Right now we are putting in place all the safe­ty and health con­cerns that the staff had. Every one of them that is true. If there are false ones we have noth­ing to do," he added.

He said the rel­e­vant cer­tifi­cates would be ready in a few days. Asked to re­spond to an al­le­ga­tion by Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke that a T&TEC fore­man was in­jured on the com­pound, he said:"There is an in­stal­la­tion to the back that be­longs to T&TEC. It's on our prop­er­ty but the in­stal­la­tion ser­vices a whole block of build­ings and it has not been prop­er­ly ser­viced and that's why it got out of hand. That's T&TEC's prob­lem, oth­er­wise they would have sued us."

Galy said he was in the process of get­ting elec­tri­cal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion."For elec­tri­cals, you are sup­posed to do your build­ing every five years. You call the in­spec­torate to do a test but we're do­ing that right now," he said.Asked why he did not main­tain the five-year cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, he added; "The build­ing was run­ning. We had no elec­tri­cal prob­lems. How many peo­ple do that? Who­ev­er owns hous­es don't do that every five years."Con­tact­ed by the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, the two Os­ha in­spec­tors iden­ti­fied on the re­port said they were not al­lowed to com­ment. Chief In­spec­tor Gaek­wad Ra­moutar re­quest­ed that all ques­tions be sent via e-mail. How­ev­er, he had not re­spond­ed up to yes­ter­day evening.

Duke's Re­sponse

Duke's re­sponse

Asked at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day if he was con­cerned about the au­then­tic­i­ty of the Os­ha re­port, PSA pres­i­dent Duke said: "I am not con­cerned be­cause that re­port was done in broad day­light with mem­bers of staff. We have a big­ger fight than what ap­pears on pa­per."We have a se­ri­ous con­cern that the Min­is­ter of Labour, be­ing the min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for the In­dus­tri­al Court and the OSH agen­cies, and yet the min­is­ter who is mak­ing de­c­la­ra­tions on his own ac­count, quite con­trary to these in­de­pen­dent bod­ies, that the com­plaints spo­ken about are friv­o­lous where­as the in­spec­tor would have said those com­plaints are grave and could threat­en life, health, and a per­son's safe­ty."He's go­ing against an in­de­pen­dent body which falls un­der his charge."

Duke added: "You have a min­is­ter ridi­cul­ing the in­tegri­ty of pub­lic of­fi­cers. How could he say a 'so called' OSH re­port when it came from some­one un­der his charge."He said sev­er­al im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers had made med­ical com­plaints, con­trary to what Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol Mc Leod had said."As a mat­ter of fact, that is why the Moo­nan Build­ing (the im­mi­gra­tion build­ing op­po­site St Mary's Col­lege) had been shut down since April 8. Just to­day an im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer com­plained of now hav­ing to seek spe­cial­ist treat­ment," he added.Duke called on Gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish an over­sight com­mit­tee, com­pris­ing five PSA mem­bers and five mem­bers of the state, to look in­to the work­ing con­di­tions of im­mi­gra­tion staff and over­see the move from the cur­rent build­ings to the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza.Asked how the PSA will re­spond if the Gov­ern­ment moved to in­tro­duce con­tempt pro­ceed­ings, Duke said: "We will re­spond in the way we feel best."