sto­ries by

GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says Gov­ern­ment does not want busi­ness­es to shut down and urged all en­ti­ties to fol­low all nec­es­sary COVID-19 safe­ty guide­lines and pro­to­cols.

The Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) has ac­cused Peren­co T&T oil and gas com­pa­ny of putting work­ers’ lives at risk, adding that Peren­co’s han­dling of the COVID-19 out­break was a clear vi­o­la­tion of the work­ers’ rights and an at­tempt at a cov­er up.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day Deyals­ingh said on De­cem­ber 15 there were two cas­es of COVID on the Teak plat­form at Peren­co.

“Three days lat­er that ex­plod­ed to 36 cas­es on De­cem­ber 19. On the Samaan Field we got on ad­di­tion­al case on the 16 so that brought the to­tal case count for the Peren­co op­er­a­tions up to 39.

“We did swab all the oth­er ar­eas and luck­i­ly all those oth­er tests came back neg­a­tive,” the min­is­ter ex­plained.

He re­it­er­at­ed that guide­lines are not on­ly in place to en­sure safe op­er­a­tions but al­so to en­sure busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity.

“Whether you are a cin­e­ma, a restau­rant, a hard­ware or oil and gas what we don’t want is for busi­ness­es to shut down. Now with this, Peren­co is go­ing to have to lose some pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty,” Deyals­ingh said.

Agree­ing that the union should be con­cerned Deyals­ingh said his min­istry has re­spond­ed to the union and as­sured that the Health Min­istry will be work­ing with the En­er­gy Min­istry to ad­dress the is­sue.

“Ad­her­ence to pro­to­cols is just good busi­ness at this point in time. The Min­istry of Health nev­er took its eyes off of this Peren­co is­sue,” Deyals­ingh said, adding that on Tues­day de­con­t­a­m­i­na­tion be­gan on the Teak plat­form.

He added that “hot and cold zones” were set up and all bio-bur­den ma­te­ri­als such as food stuff and linens were sani­tised.

All gen­er­al trash were al­so re­moved and in­cin­er­at­ed.

Air qual­i­ty test­ing con­tin­ues to take place as well as all hu­man touch ar­eas on the rig like cat­walks, hand rails, cranes and hooks, sleep­ing and recre­ation ac­com­mo­da­tion and oth­er ar­eas were al­so sani­tised.

Deyals­ingh added that since the 19th of this month there have not been any new cas­es at Peren­co.

“We did write a let­ter to Peren­co urg­ing them in a very ro­bust man­ner that the pro­to­cols should be ad­hered to. I am urg­ing all busi­ness­es to ad­here to the pro­to­cols that we set out,” Deyals­ingh added.

Peren­co is the op­er­a­tor of the con­sor­tium that man­ages the Teak, Samaan and Poui (TSP) fields, with a 70 per cent stake ac­quired in 2016.

These fields are lo­cat­ed 20 km to 45 kilo­me­tres from the South­east Coast of Trinidad in wa­ter depths of 55 me­tres.

Peren­co’s part­ners are Petrotrin and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, which each hold a 15 per­cent in­ter­est in the TSP fields.

This in­cludes 81 li­cens­es for a to­tal area of 1,780 square kilo­me­tres.