Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­gel Ro­get yes­ter­day de­liv­ered an­oth­er let­ter to the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (OS­HA) Car­olyn San­cho, re­quest­ing a meet­ing to dis­cuss al­leged health and safe­ty is­sues faced by work­ers of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC).

“To date, one week has passed and there is ab­solute­ly no re­sponse, not an ac­knowl­edge­ment, no re­sponse to our re­quest for this meet­ing, not to chat but to high­light these is­sues which we feel that T&TEC as a state agency, a state en­ter­prise, is not ad­dress­ing. By they not ad­dress­ing it ad­e­quate­ly, they con­tin­ue to put the lives of the work­ers and the health of the work­ers and the lives of the pub­lic at risk,” he said.

Speak­ing out­side OS­HA’s St Au­gus­tine of­fice, Ro­get claimed that every time the union at­tempts to ad­dress these is­sues with T&TEC, the com­mis­sion goes to the In­dus­tri­al Court and gets in­junc­tions to stop the work­ers from protest­ing.

In De­cem­ber 2024, T&TEC was grant­ed an in­junc­tion against OW­TU to pre­vent fur­ther acts of in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, fol­low­ing protests on Oc­to­ber 25 and 26, 2024. Last year, mem­bers of the union pick­et­ed out­side Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les’ house and out­side of Prime Min­is­ter’s res­i­dence in St Ann’s.

Yes­ter­day, Ro­get said T&TEC work­ers are grow­ing more and more frus­trat­ed with the com­mis­sion re­gard­ing health and safe­ty is­sues, which is why the union is again call­ing for the in­de­pen­dent in­ter­ven­tion of the high­est au­thor­i­ty at OS­HA.

He claimed there were 11 health and safe­ty is­sues af­fect­ing T&TEC work­ers across the coun­try, in­clud­ing leak­ing trans­form­ers at sub­sta­tions, no fire cer­ti­fi­ca­tion at Ben­bow and Wright­son Road lo­ca­tions, a lack of prop­er tools and per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment, de­fec­tive air con­di­tion­ers and poor light­ing at of­fices in To­ba­go.

“I guess if we hear noth­ing from them we will cer­tain­ly have to come back again with the work­ers now who them­selves are placed at risk...we call for good sense to pre­vail and for the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor to re­spond,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter Gon­za­les and asked if he was aware of these is­sues. How­ev­er, he did not want to en­gage the OW­TU.

“I am not go­ing to re­spond to an or­gan­i­sa­tion that spear­head­ed il­le­gal protests in front of the homes of pub­lic of­fi­cials and trau­ma­tis­ing cit­i­zens and their fam­i­lies in the process. I think the me­dia should con­cern it­self more with that. But of course, no one cares about our chil­dren and our per­son­al wel­fare...I should al­so write OSH about the con­duct of the OW­TU,” he said.

Calls and an email were sent to OS­HA but up to late yes­ter­day evening there was no re­sponse.