Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) An­cel Ro­get says Petrotrin pres­i­dent Khalid Has­sanali must go and a pub­lic in­quiry in­to the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny must be launched.This as he ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the sus­pen­sion of Petrotrin's vice pres­i­dent of re­fin­ing and mar­ket­ing, Ma­do Bachan.Bachan's sus­pen­sion was an­nounced on Sat­ur­day by Petrotrin chair­man Lind­say Gillette af­ter last week's oil spill.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ro­get said the de­ci­sion to sus­pend Bachan was not good enough and called for Has­sanali to be re­moved. "No­body is point­ing to the fact that it is the pres­i­dent who has ul­ti­mate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the op­er­a­tions. Were this BP Amo­co, British Gas, Rep­sol, any one of the multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions or any se­ri­ous com­pa­ny the pres­i­dent would have long gone. We con­tin­ue with him when he has to take ul­ti­mate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty be­fore his VP and top man­agers and so on. He seems to be an un­touch­able," Ro­get claimed.

Last week Tues­day a rup­tured oil tank (MP 6) at the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery and the bund wall, which was sup­posed to con­tain the spilled oil from the tank, col­lapsed lead­ing to oil es­cap­ing from the re­fin­ery and en­ter­ing the Guaracara Riv­er. Last De­cem­ber oil was spilled in­to the Gulf of Paria along the south­west­ern penin­su­la.Ro­get said Petrotrin's top man­age­ment should not have al­lowed to re­main af­ter hav­ing presided over two ma­jor oil spill dis­as­ters in just un­der one year.

He called for an in­de­pen­dent pub­lic in­quiry in­to the op­er­a­tions of Petrotrin, in­clud­ing the com­pa­ny's hir­ing prac­tices. He al­leged that the com­pa­ny was re­cruit­ing un­qual­i­fied per­son­nel for top po­si­tions and that is "hurt­ing and harm­ing the com­pa­ny."The OW­TU, Ro­get said, has placed blame for the cur­rent "fi­as­co" in Mara­bel­la square­ly at the feet of the Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

He ex­plained that the OW­TU wrote to the Prime Min­is­ter re­quest­ing a meet­ing on a mat­ter of ur­gent na­tion­al in­ter­est with per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion that, if not act­ed up­on, there would be a re­peat of the dis­as­ter that oc­curred in La Brea on De­cem­ber 17.

"The Prime Min­is­ter re­fused to meet with us and as a re­sult of that Tues­day's sit­u­a­tion hap­pened. We could have pre­dict­ed that. Our point is if they did not take ac­tion on a mat­ter of ur­gent re­quire­ment or make reme­dies to the ag­ing in­fra­struc­ture that threat­en the limbs and lives of work­ers and the en­vi­ron­ment, if they did not act on it with a prop­er and ag­gres­sive pro­gramme then we would con­tin­ue to have dis­as­ters of that na­ture re­peat­ed­ly," Ro­get ar­gued.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar's fail­ure to deal with the root cause of that De­cem­ber spill and who caused it has the coun­try back to where it is to­day."Af­ter that ma­jor dis­as­ter this coun­try should not have to be go­ing through an­oth­er dis­as­ter again. We went through it be­cause she pro­tect­ed her friends on the board and her friends in man­age­ment at Petrotrin. She ap­point­ed a na­tion­al task­force. Where are the rec­om­men­da­tions from that task­force?" Ro­get said.

Ro­get said the La Brea sit­u­a­tion was not prop­er­ly dealt with and now in Mara­bel­la peo­ple lives are turned up­side down."Their liveli­hood is af­fect­ed they can­not cook or pro­vide a dai­ly meal for them­selves. Busi­ness­es were shut down. All of those things oc­curred, but you have a pres­i­dent of a state en­ter­prise re­main­ing. We will have many more dis­as­ters like that un­less we re­move Khalid Has­sanali and the top man­age­ment of Petrotrin," Ro­get ar­gued.

He said the OW­TU has ev­i­dence in its pos­ses­sion which will re­veal to the pub­lic on the re­al cause of the oil spill.Ro­get has promised to meet with Mara­bel­la res­i­dents to hear their con­cerns to­day.