The Trinidad & To­ba­go Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NP) has de­nied claims that the brak­ing sys­tems on their fu­el trucks are faulty.

“As a re­spon­si­ble state-af­fil­i­at­ed en­ter­prise, NP takes very se­ri­ous­ly the safe and ef­fi­cient ex­e­cu­tion of its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to dis­trib­ute fu­el and places great em­pha­sis on main­tain­ing best prac­tice safe­ty pro­to­cols,” NP stat­ed in a re­lease.

NP’s state­ment was in re­sponse to a press con­fer­ence held by the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) ear­li­er this week in which it was al­leged that that NP fu­el trucks could pose a haz­ard to pub­lic safe­ty due to a lack of emer­gency brakes to sup­ple­ment their nor­mal brakes.

“As it re­lates to the al­leged faulty brak­ing sys­tem on the RTW (Road Tank Wag­ons) units, the Com­pa­ny wish­es to as­sure the pub­lic that the op­er­a­tion of the RTWs does not in any way pose an un­nec­es­sary safe­ty risk to the lives of the work­ers or the pub­lic at large,” it stat­ed.

NP said it cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nies that there is any con­di­tion on the RTW Fleet brakes that amounts to a breach of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act.

“The trac­tors are equipped with four (4) main brak­ing sys­tems, in which the ser­vice brake per­forms the pri­ma­ry func­tion of stop­ping the ve­hi­cle when the foot­brake is de­pressed. The sec­ondary brake sys­tem comes in­to ef­fect in the event of fail­ure of the ser­vice brake and is a fail­safe sys­tem that is ac­ti­vat­ed when the air pres­sure is in­suf­fi­cient in the unit. The four main brak­ing sys­tems which the RTW units pos­sess is suf­fi­cient to en­sure that the ve­hi­cle is able to ad­e­quate­ly brake when/as re­quired,” NP stat­ed.

“Notwith­stand­ing the fore­go­ing, NP Man­age­ment can con­firm that as a fur­ther mea­sure of safe­ty and to pro­vide that added as­sur­ance, the Com­pa­ny com­menced the process of in­stalling a cir­cuit on the al­ready in­spect­ed and ful­ly func­tion­al RTW units on 21st Sep­tem­ber 2020, with the process be­ing com­plet­ed on 22nd Sep­tem­ber 2020, in the in­ter­ests of en­sur­ing the con­ti­nu­ity of fu­el sup­plies,” it stat­ed.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly NP stat­ed that with the ad­vent of COVID 19, the com­pa­ny was proac­tive in in­sti­tut­ing pro­to­cols for the sani­ti­sa­tion of the RTWs based on ex­pert ad­vice.