The fi­nal day of Petrotrin’s op­er­a­tion de­scend­ed in­to chaos yes­ter­day af­ter work­ers claimed the com­pa­ny failed to pay them all their sev­er­ance, salary and oth­er ben­e­fits.

Work­ers blocked the en­trance to the San­ta Flo­ra Pro­duc­tion and Ex­plo­ration plant with three pro­duc­tion rigs to sig­nal their anger and frus­tra­tion to man­age­ment. There was al­so a fire at an old can­teen op­po­site the San­ta Flo­ra plant but no one could say how the fire was start­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union, the work­ers staged sit-in protests at var­i­ous plants, in­clud­ing San­ta Flo­ra, where roads and gates were blocked; Pointe-a-Pierre, where work­ers locked them­selves in the can­teen and on the Trin­mar com­pound.

But in a press re­lease, Petrotrin’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment claimed the com­pa­ny dis­bursed $2.7 bil­lion in ex­it and oth­er pay­ments to its 3,400 per­ma­nent em­ploy­ees while 1,229 tem­po­rary work­ers re­ceived ex-gratis pay­ments. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny said it with­held the pay­ment of tax­es on the ter­mi­na­tion pay­ments un­til the work­ers can pro­duce their tax re­turns.

“To avoid po­ten­tial de­lays in dis­burs­ing the pay­ments, Petrotrin has with­held the em­ploy­ees’ po­ten­tial tax li­a­bil­i­ty and placed these funds in es­crow.”

The com­pa­ny promised to re­mit with­held funds once em­ploy­ees have sat­is­fied the Board of In­land Rev­enue that their tax­es are up to date.

As work­ers packed up their things and be­gan leav­ing the work­place yes­ter­day morn­ing, they ex­pressed sad­ness and un­cer­tain­ty over their fu­ture. But just af­ter mid­day, their emo­tions turned in­to anger as word spread that they were go­ing home emp­ty-hand­ed. Up to 6 pm yes­ter­day, work­ers’ salaries for No­vem­ber were not in their bank ac­counts. Con­firm­ing this ear­li­er yes­ter­day, OW­TU San­ta Flo­ra branch pres­i­dent Stephen Bax­am said work­ers were at the time de­mand­ing that they be prop­er­ly com­pen­sat­ed.

“Work­ers are gath­ered hav­ing peace­ful dis­cus­sion wait­ing for prop­er guid­ance about when we will be paid and how much. Com­ing out of the meet­ings it was agreed by man­age­ment of Petrotrin that work­ers will be paid their back­pay, sev­er­ance, salary, sav­ing plan and trav­el grant to­day and all oth­er out­stand­ing mon­ey.”

He said the demise of Petrotrin could have been avoid­ed if the com­pa­ny had ac­cept­ed the pro­pos­al made by the OW­TU two years go.

Petrotrin es­tate po­lice of­fi­cer Gabriel O’souna says work­ers will now have to ex­plore what le­gal op­tions are avail­able to them to force the com­pa­ny to pay them. Com­plain­ing that he has not been paid for two weeks at a press con­fer­ence held by work­ers at the Paria Suites ho­tel in Clax­ton Bay, O’souna said work­ers now have no mon­ey to pay their bills or pro­vide for their them­selves and their fam­i­lies.

Giv­ing a break­down of the pay­ment in a press re­lease, Petrotrin stat­ed that $1.8 bil­lion in ter­mi­na­tion pack­ages, $201 mil­lion for out­stand­ing va­ca­tion, $150 mil­lion for med­ical and oth­er ben­e­fits and $55 mil­lion for out­stand­ing pro­mo­tions were due to work­ers. It stat­ed that the 1,229 work­ers rep­re­sent­ed 55 per cent of the com­pa­ny’s tem­po­rary work­ers.

The re­lease quot­ed chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet as say­ing, “This is a dif­fi­cult time for all con­cerned and we hope that every­one af­fect­ed is able to es­tab­lish a pos­i­tive and se­cure fu­ture for them­selves.”

The re­lease fur­ther stat­ed that fol­low­ing the clo­sure of the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions, the com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue and the af­fect­ed per­sons and their fam­i­lies will have ac­cess to sup­port ser­vices for the next six months. These ser­vices will in­clude stress man­age­ment, change man­age­ment and fi­nan­cial coun­selling.

OW­TU chief re­search and ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer Ozzi War­wick said the treat­ment met­ed out to Petrotrin work­ers was in­hu­mane and un­ac­cept­able.

“This group of work­ers have con­tributed bil­lions to the state which so many peo­ple ben­e­fit­ed from. Yet even as their jobs are sev­ered, in this last mo­ment they are yet to re­ceive their fi­nal pay­ments. The ap­proach of the board and this Gov­ern­ment shows great dis­re­spect and dis­re­gard to these work­ers, whether per­ma­nent, tem­po­rary or ca­su­al, as well as all the re­tirees and we con­demn their ac­tions as dis­gust­ing and noth­ing less than in­hu­mane.”

At­tempts to reach Es­pinet on his cell­phone were un­suc­cess­ful.