Ryan Ba­choo

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

A Massy En­er­gy En­gi­neered So­lu­tions Ltd (MEES) work­er, as­signed to Ni­Quan En­er­gy Trinidad’s Pointe-a-Pierre plant, who was in­jured in an in­ci­dent at the fa­cil­i­ty on Thurs­day, has died. He died while un­der­go­ing treat­ment at a hos­pi­tal in Mi­a­mi.

MEES con­firmed the death in a me­dia re­lease stat­ing, “Massy En­er­gy En­gi­neered So­lu­tions Ltd is deeply sad­dened by the pass­ing of our em­ploy­ee Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon who was in­volved in an in­ci­dent at Ni­Quan En­er­gy Trinidad Ltd on Thurs­day 15th June 2023.”

The state­ment vague­ly said he “was be­ing treat­ed at a spe­cial­ist fa­cil­i­ty, but un­for­tu­nate­ly suc­cumbed to his in­juries and passed away on Sun­day 18th June 2023.”

Speak­ing at Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions in Fyz­abad yes­ter­day, Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) Pointe-A-Pierre branch pres­i­dent, Christo­pher Jack­man, re­vealed the se­ries of events that led to Ramkissoon’s in­jury.

He said while the com­pa­ny is not unionised, work­ers speak with him reg­u­lar­ly out of con­cern. Jack­man told the me­dia, “He was work­ing at the fa­cil­i­ty and en­coun­tered a process leak where naph­tha would have sprayed on­to the work­er and he would have lit afire. What would have caused the ig­ni­tion, I’m not sure. Af­ter he would have been ablaze, he was ad­vised by per­sons on site to jump and they will catch him. Af­ter he pro­ceed­ed to jump, they failed to catch him or failed to catch him prop­er­ly and, as a re­sult of that, he sus­tained fur­ther in­juries by falling on­to the floor.” Jack­man said he was told the jump was from rough­ly ten feet high.

In a me­dia re­lease on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon, Ni­Quan said the in­di­vid­ual was in sta­ble con­di­tion and re­ceiv­ing med­ical at­ten­tion. It did not give de­tails of the ex­tent of the in­jury or what led to the work­er suf­fer­ing the in­jury.

How­ev­er, Jack­man said, “It’s im­por­tant to al­so high­light that while all of this hap­pened, there was no fire alarm heard at the fa­cil­i­ty and it took hours for an am­bu­lance to ar­rive on site to ush­er the work­er to hos­pi­tal.” At West Shore, where he was tak­en, he un­der­went surgery to sta­bilise and they then for­ward­ed him via air­craft to a burn fa­cil­i­ty in Mi­a­mi where he suc­cumbed to his in­juries on Sun­day.

Jack­man said he un­der­stands the plant was still op­er­a­tional.

“At one point, the work­ers were con­cerned about the in­ci­dent and the fact that their co-work­er would have been in­jured, so yes there was a short ‘down tool’, but right now the work­ers are back to work,” he told the me­dia.

The pres­i­dent of the OW­TU Pointe-a-Pierre branch said, “Work like this an am­bu­lance should have been on stand­by for rapid re­sponse.”

Ef­forts to reach Ni­Quan En­er­gy Ltd CEO, Ains­ley Gill, for com­ment on the in­ci­dent proved fu­tile.