Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get is warn­ing of im­pend­ing “cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ure” and pos­si­ble fa­tal­i­ties at Yara Trinidad Ltd’s am­mo­nia plants in Point Lisas.

Sur­round­ed by work­ers, Ro­get, dur­ing an in­ter­view with re­porters at the en­trance of the com­pa­ny’s Point Lisas plant yes­ter­day, said man­age­ment and the reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies could avert a po­ten­tial dis­as­ter by dis­con­tin­u­ing the re­place­ment of the per­ma­nent work­force with con­tract em­ploy­ees.

“This is not about ne­go­ti­a­tions, this is not about ex­tra pay, this is about lives and limbs and the ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the pres­i­dent and the man­age­ment at Yara Trinidad Ltd and the in­ef­fi­cien­cies of the reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies to reg­u­late sit­u­a­tions like this. 

“So where you have a lot of near miss­es tak­ing place, bet your bot­tom dol­lar if that is not ad­dressed what will sit at the top of that is a fa­tal­i­ty,” warned Ro­get.

He said the union would have ne­go­ti­at­ed a col­lec­tive agree­ment with terms and con­di­tions and clas­si­fi­ca­tions for jobs, but he claimed per­ma­nent work­ers have been pushed aside for con­tract work­ers.

“What you have is a pro­lif­er­a­tion of con­trac­tors and con­tract em­ploy­ees who have very lit­tle or ab­solute­ly no knowl­edge of the plant,” he added.

Re­call­ing that last year the work­ers staged a one-week strike over sim­i­lar is­sues, Ro­get warned of sim­i­lar ac­tion if the com­pa­ny, the OSH Au­thor­i­ty and the Min­istry of Labour fail to ad­dress this mat­ter. 

He al­so claimed there is usu­al­ly cor­rup­tion in work­places with a pro­lif­er­a­tion of con­tract work.

OW­TU Yara branch sec­re­tary, Ke­iron Sim­mons, claimed that 60 per cent of the per­ma­nent work­force has been re­placed by con­tract work­ers in the me­chan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal, and op­er­a­tions sec­tions, re­sult­ing in an un­safe work­place. 

He al­leged that re­cent­ly a work­er suf­fered lac­er­a­tions to three fin­gers and an “un­su­per­vised” crane crashed in­to the main gate. 

Sim­mons, who is al­so the branch safe­ty health com­mit­tee pres­i­dent, said, “What we try­ing to do here is to alert the na­tion that this sit­u­a­tion can cause cat­a­stroph­ic prob­lems at this site. The cat­a­stroph­ic prob­lems that we talk­ing about would be is­sues we would have had with our LTS, is­sues we would have had on the plants where it per­tains to dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions where­by life and limb would have been lost.”

Mean­while, OW­TU Yara branch vice pres­i­dent Nigel Boodoo be­lieves the op­er­a­tions at the com­pa­ny are al­so in jeop­ardy. He claimed that con­tract labour does not come with the as­sur­ance of 100 per cent re­li­a­bil­i­ty on re­pairs. Un­der­scor­ing the im­por­tance of the plant as a for­eign ex­change in­come gen­er­a­tor, he said, “They (work­ers) are here to se­cure their safe­ty and health and the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the as­set to­wards its sus­tain­abil­i­ty as a na­tion­al in­come gen­er­a­tor of forex.”

Yara: Im­por­tance of con­struc­tive di­a­logue

But in a me­dia state­ment fol­low­ing the claims by the union and its se­nior mem­bers, the com­pa­ny yes­ter­day reaf­firmed its ded­i­ca­tion to work­ing in part­ner­ship with the union.  It did not re­spond specif­i­cal­ly to the al­le­ga­tions.

Yara Trinidad Ltd stat­ed, “While we were sur­prised by to­day’s events and note some se­ri­ous in­ac­cu­ra­cies in the state­ments made, we re­main stead­fast in our be­lief in the prin­ci­ples of sound In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions and the vi­tal im­por­tance of con­struc­tive di­a­logue root­ed in good faith dis­cus­sions.” 

The com­pa­ny as­sured that its poli­cies and pro­ce­dures ad­here to strict safe­ty pro­to­cols, eth­i­cal stan­dards, and cor­po­rate gov­er­nance frame­works, cer­ti­fied to rel­e­vant stan­dards and codes, in­clud­ing the com­pe­ten­cy as­sur­ance stan­dards gov­ern­ing their work­force.

“Safe­ty and Com­pli­ance are fun­da­men­tal to main­tain­ing our ‘Li­cense to Op­er­ate’,” the com­pa­ny added. 

Yara Trinidad Ltd is a sub­sidiary of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny, Yara In­ter­na­tion­al ASA, one of the largest fer­til­iz­er pro­duc­ers in the world, com­pris­ing fa­cil­i­ties and com­mer­cial of­fices in over 50 coun­tries. 

Yara Trinidad Lim­it­ed man­ages and op­er­ates two am­mo­nia plants.