An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny chair­man Nyree Al­fon­so has re­signed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, end­ing what she de­scribed as a “very re­ward­ing” but de­mand­ing tenure at the state-owned fu­el com­pa­ny, which is un­der Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (TPHL).

How­ev­er, she de­nied sug­ges­tions that she was asked to re­sign.

Ef­forts to ob­tain of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion of her de­par­ture from Paria Fu­el yes­ter­day proved un­suc­cess­ful. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said, “Yes, I have been in­formed through the reg­u­lar process.”

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Al­fon­so said her de­ci­sion was based on per­son­al rea­sons and a de­sire to pur­sue new op­por­tu­ni­ties af­ter more than three decades in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“Per­son­al rea­sons and the oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties that I wish to ex­plore at this point in time in my ca­reer,” Al­fon­so said when asked the rea­son for her res­ig­na­tion.

She de­nied, though, that there was any dis­pute sur­round­ing her de­par­ture.

“No, no, no, not at all,” she said, adding that she be­lieved “it’s bet­ter to make a clean break.”

Al­fon­so con­firmed her res­ig­na­tion took ef­fect yes­ter­day. Her ap­point­ment as chair­woman be­gan on Ju­ly 1 last year.

Al­fon­so said she does not know who will re­place her, or how the com­pa­ny in­tends to man­age her de­par­ture.

Asked whether the res­ig­na­tion was am­i­ca­ble, she replied, “Oh yes, very, very much so. As I said, in this stage of my ca­reer, there are oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties that I see pre­sent­ing them­selves, and I’d like to ex­plore those.”

Re­flect­ing on her time at Paria, Al­fon­so de­scribed the ex­pe­ri­ence as “a lot of hard work and very re­ward­ing,” not­ing the com­pa­ny has been op­er­at­ing with lim­it­ed man­pow­er.

One of the achieve­ments she high­light­ed was main­tain­ing a sta­ble fu­el sup­ply dur­ing pe­ri­ods of re­gion­al dis­rup­tion.

“The coun­try has fu­el. That’s an achieve­ment when oth­er coun­tries that are far big­ger than us ran in­to all kinds of prob­lems. Trinidad nev­er ran short of fu­el. The board could be very proud that we were thrown on the horns of a dilem­ma and we de­liv­ered.”

Al­fon­so al­so point­ed to ef­forts sur­round­ing Paria’s div­ing op­er­a­tions.

“I think I put the divers this year on a very good foot­ing and, all things be­ing equal, that should work out in the best way it can,” she said.

The com­ment comes against the back­drop of the Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, Paria div­ing tragedy, in which Kaz­im Ali Jnr, Yusuf Hen­ry, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Fyzal Kur­ban died af­ter be­ing sucked in­to a 36-inch pipeline con­nect­ed to a hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber while work­ing for Paria Fu­el and Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices Ltd on a project at Cou­va.

Christo­pher Boodram was the lone sur­vivor. In­ves­ti­ga­tors lat­er con­clud­ed the in­ci­dent re­sult­ed from “gross and con­se­quent­ly crim­i­nal” neg­li­gence.