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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Roget tells Petrotrin workers reject separation deals

by

Kevon Felmine
2474 days ago
20181004

Whether there are sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages worth $1 mil­lion or more, Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get is urg­ing work­ers not to ex­am­ine any of­fers from Petrotrin.

His plea echoed the ad­vice giv­en by Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke, who told work­ers gath­ered at the Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va last evening that they should not ac­cept any of­fer from the com­pa­ny to part from their jobs.

“They are with the be­lief that you don’t know mon­ey so they throw a lit­tle mil­lion or two mil­lion be­fore you. They sit down in a room and they con­tem­plate that ‘if we give them that, we will break the strug­gle. And the on­ly way to break that strug­gle is to in­vite them to see what pack­ages they have,’” Ro­get said at the end of the first day of the union’s three-day protest march.

“And you be­gin to ex­am­ine those pack­ages of death, you are con­struc­tors of your own demise com­rades. There­fore, be­fore I start here this evening, I want the strength of con­vic­tion and re­sis­tance that we are not ex­am­in­ing any pack­ages. We are ex­am­in­ing on­ly our job se­cu­ri­ty.”

Ro­get said he al­ready knew that there were a few work­ers who were go­ing through their Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment chan­nels to work out deals.

Be­fore Ro­get spoke, Duke told work­ers that if they are to sur­ren­der to Petrotrin’s re­trench­ment, every­one should leave with no less than $5 mil­lion in sep­a­ra­tion pay­ment. His com­ments re­ceived a hearty re­sponse from hun­dreds of work­ers and trade union­ists gath­ered af­ter they walked 22 kilo­me­tres from the Pointe-a-Pierre Round­about in scorch­ing weath­er to ar­rive in Cou­va through heavy rains.

De­fi­ant against Petrotrin’s plans to re­trench the en­tire work­force in its re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise, the work­ers ral­lied through the day to lis­ten to the var­i­ous trade union lead­ers at Rien­zi last evening.

Duke ad­vised work­ers that they should stick to­geth­er for the wel­fare of all their col­leagues. In do­ing so, he said no work­er should be talk­ing to or mak­ing any deals with their Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, but in­stead take their con­cerns to Ro­get.

“They will tell you about how much mon­ey you’re go­ing to get and how they’re go­ing to pay you off. Folks, when they look at their mon­ey, it is blast­ed small mon­ey. Trust me, that is small mon­ey. All of you should get $5 mil­lion min­i­mum,” Duke said.

As he looked up­on the tired faces who are ex­pect­ed to be­gin march­ing from Cou­va to Aranguez for day two of the three-day march to­day, Duke told them it was a bat­tle of sur­vival.

The march is ex­pect­ed to end with a mass ral­ly in Port-of-Spain to­mor­row.


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