Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has in­struct­ed the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP) Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny to con­duct an in­quiry in­to the death of 47-year-old Ria George. George, a su­per­mar­ket su­per­vi­sor from Debe, died on Sat­ur­day af­ter suf­fer­ing third-de­gree burns to 32 per cent of her body dur­ing an ex­plo­sion, al­leged­ly caused by a leak­ing 20 lb LPG cylin­der. The in­ci­dent oc­curred in her kitchen al­most two months ago.

When asked about the in­ci­dent, Mooni­lal told Guardian Me­dia that he took note of the re­ports in the me­dia and asked NP’s chair­man Arnold Ram to con­duct an in­quiry in­to the mat­ter “and to re­port to us at the min­istry in terms of any find­ings that they may have, whether or not this may or may not in­volve any tech­ni­cal mat­ter in terms of NP and their process­es.”

Not­ing that he ex­pects to re­ceive a re­port in a day or two, he ex­tend­ed the min­istry’s deep­est con­do­lences to George’s fam­i­ly and friends.

“We are mak­ing in­quiries at the lev­el of the NP and the min­istry,” he said.

Mean­while, in a press re­lease yes­ter­day, the NP re­mind­ed the pub­lic of crit­i­cal safe­ty steps to fol­low when han­dling LPG cylin­ders.

Ex­press­ing con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly, NP ad­vised cus­tomers that once a cylin­der en­tered their home, busi­ness, or res­i­dence, a soapy wa­ter test should be per­formed at the con­nec­tions be­tween the reg­u­la­tor and the valve, the reg­u­la­tor and the hose, and the hose and the stove be­fore use.

NP fur­ther ad­vised cus­tomers that if a gas leak is sus­pect­ed, im­me­di­ate­ly dis­con­nect the cylin­der and move it to a safe and se­cure lo­ca­tion away from the premis­es. NP not­ed that cus­tomers should re­port any is­sues or con­cerns re­lat­ed to LPG cylin­ders to the rel­e­vant dis­trib­u­tor or re­tail­er from which the cylin­der was sourced.

It said that for fur­ther as­sis­tance, cus­tomers could con­tact NP through var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels, in­clud­ing its hot­line at 800-NPMC (6762); What­sApp: (868) 686-NPMC (6762); and email: cus­tomer ser­vice@np.co.tt, which can all be found on NP’s web­site at www.np.co.tt.

The com­pa­ny em­pha­sised that safe­ty was of para­mount im­por­tance, and it was com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that, be­fore dis­tri­b­u­tion, all LPG cylin­ders were safe for use by cus­tomers.

George’s fu­ner­al will be held on Fri­day at Boodoo’s Fu­ner­al Home in Pe­nal, start­ing at 11 am.