As the Gov­ern­ment moves to boost se­cu­ri­ty to pro­tect T&T’s pe­tro­le­um as­sets, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Pointe-a-Pierre Branch of the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union, Christo­pher Jack­man, says there con­tin­ues to be theft at the Pointe-a-Pierre com­pound de­spite se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Jack­man said there have been in­ci­dents of peo­ple steal­ing from the craft shops at the Pointe-a-Pierre com­pound, which be­came over­grown af­ter the re­fin­ery closed.

Jack­man said af­ter Petrotrin was moth­balled in 2018, the se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments were tak­en over by a pri­vate com­pa­ny.

“When it comes to the as­sets at the re­fin­ery, ever since the clo­sure in 2018, the se­cu­ri­ty was nev­er tran­si­tioned in a prop­er man­ner,” he said.

Jack­man added: “That pri­vate­ly owned firm re­al­ly doesn’t have a vest­ed in­ter­est in terms of se­cur­ing the as­sets. The work­ers are paid min­i­mum wage, and they’re not re­al­ly trained and knowl­edge­able about what ex­ists there with­in the as­sets.”

He claimed near­by res­i­dents are steal­ing.

“We have heard and we have seen ev­i­dence of res­i­dents still cross­ing the riv­er and steal­ing items. We’ve heard re­ports of as­sets stolen from the craft shops. It’s some­thing that has to be as­sessed when we get in there.”

Jack­man said that theft con­tin­ues in land pro­duc­tion ar­eas, in­clud­ing the re­moval of pipes. He be­lieves Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um’s cur­rent arrange­ments fall short of those pre­vi­ous­ly un­der Petrotrin.

“Those sit­u­a­tions would have been oc­cur­ring a lot less un­der the Petrotrin arrange­ment as com­pared now to Her­itage,” he said.

He ad­vised that Her­itage re­vis­it its pro­ce­dures.

Jack­man ex­pressed sup­port for a re­cent state­ment made by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who raised con­cern over on­go­ing theft and sab­o­tage at pe­tro­le­um in­stal­la­tions. “I am in 100 per cent agree­ment with the state­ment from Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, that the se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments need to be re­viewed and re­assessed to en­sure that the as­sets are se­cured go­ing for­ward. Be­cause every­thing lost now will in­clude ad­di­tion­al ex­pens­es at the restart lev­el.”

Last week, Mooni­lal said that sev­er­al sites had been left un­at­tend­ed af­ter Petrotrin’s clo­sure, which cre­at­ed an en­vi­ron­ment for theft and van­dal­ism.

At the time, he said se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures were be­ing ad­dressed.