Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Petrotrin is brac­ing for a mass demon­stra­tion to­day out­side its Pointe-a-Pierre ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fices as Mara­bel­la res­i­dents and the Oil­fields' Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) unite to protest against the com­pa­ny's re­sponse to last Tues­day's oil dis­as­ter.The res­i­dents, who will be led by OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get, have vowed to come out in their num­bers to reg­is­ter their dis­plea­sure at Petrotrin's al­leged fail­ure to ad­dress their health con­cerns and calls for com­pen­sa­tion.

The res­i­dents' lives were dis­rupt­ed by the oil leak last week, which hap­pened af­ter one of Petrotrin's tanks (MP6), con­tain­ing slop oil, rup­tured at its base. The oil es­caped from the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery and made its way in­to the Guaracara Riv­er.Yes­ter­day the pun­gent smell of oil hung in the air at Silk Cot­ton Road, Sixth Street Ex­ten­sion and Man­go Al­ley, as Petrotrin work­ers cleaned up the oil-stained riv­er bank.

Ro­get, who met with the res­i­dents to hear their con­cerns and took a tour of af­fect­ed ar­eas in Mara­bel­la, hint­ed Petrotrin em­ploy­ees may be part of this morn­ing's demon­stra­tion at 8 am."You got to leave some­thing for the el­e­ment of sur­prise. We do not want to fore­warn them. What I will say is, the em­ploy­ees are al­so at risk of both their health and their safe­ty, lives and limbs," Ro­get said as he ad­dressed the me­dia dur­ing his meet­ing with the res­i­dents.

He said the sit­u­a­tion in Mara­bel­la was the tip of the ice­berg and "in­dica­tive what we were com­plain­ing about all of the time."Peo­ple liv­ing in Mara­bel­la were at se­ri­ous risk, he said, call­ing for them to be evac­u­at­ed from the area im­me­di­ate­ly un­til it was safe for them to re­turn. Hy­dro­gen sul­phide gas, which was be­ing emit­ted from the oil, he said, "is such a tricky and dan­ger­ous gas that when you can­not smell it again, that is when it is most dan­ger­ous.

"When you be­come ac­cus­tomed to it, that is when it is most dead­ly and there­fore the res­i­dents who they left in the en­vi­ron­ment con­tin­ue to be a risk," he said.The OW­TU, he said, was de­mand­ing that res­i­dents be re­spect­ed and re­lo­cat­ed, "as they will do any oth­er cit­i­zen."He said for the res­i­dents to get that type of re­spect they had to show and de­mand that they de­served it, as he called on them to join the OW­TU and stage a mass demon­stra­tion at Petrotrin's ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing at the Pointe-a-Pierre round­about.

That, he said, was the first step."If they did not re­spond ad­e­quate­ly, we are go­ing to take it to an­oth­er lev­el. We are not to­day go­ing to ex­pose what that lev­el is."The OW­TU has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty not just for the work­ers and their pay but for all of T&T and all of those who are in the di­rect im­pact," he said.His de­c­la­ra­tion was greet­ed with cheers from the res­i­dents, who are call­ing for re­lo­ca­tion.

While some of those af­fect­ed by the oil leak were squat­ters, Ro­get said, thats should not be a mat­ter of con­cern."These res­i­dents are hu­man be­ings de­serv­ing of prop­er and de­cent at­ten­tion and re­spect."It has noth­ing to do with reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion, it has to do with hu­man lives and their health and the high­est lev­el of dis­re­spect met­ed out to them."Right now our pri­or­i­ty is not to check res­i­den­tial sta­tus as to whether they are reg­u­larised or not," he said.

Ro­get dis­missed Petrotrin's planned in­de­pen­dent probe in­to the oil leak, say­ing he had no con­fi­dence in any such in­ves­ti­ga­tion.He al­so al­leged that Petrotrin had been threat­en­ing cer­tain me­dia hous­es, say­ing it would pull its ad­ver­tis­ing if they con­tin­ued to pub­lish ad­verse re­ports about the state-run oil com­pa­ny.