KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to re­lease the re­port on the Ni­quan En­er­gy Trinidad ex­plo­sion that claimed the life of pip­efit­ter Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Para­mount Build­ing, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get said the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to hold the re­port close to its chest.

How­ev­er, he said the re­port from the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Paria/LM­CS div­ing tragedy, re­leased on Fri­day, should be a cat­a­lyst for change.

Ramkissoon, 35, of Bar­rack­pore, died on June 18, 2023, af­ter suf­fer­ing se­vere burns dur­ing an ex­plo­sion at the gas-to-liq­uids plant based in­side the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny fa­cil­i­ty in Pointe-a-Pierre.

Three days ear­li­er, Ramkissoon, an em­ploy­ee of Massy En­er­gy En­gi­neered So­lu­tions (MEES), suf­fered se­vere burn in­juries while car­ry­ing out prepara­to­ry work for planned main­te­nance works on the plant. An am­bu­lance took him to the West Shore Med­ical Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal in Co­corite, where he un­der­went surgery to sta­bilise his con­di­tion. He then went to a burn fa­cil­i­ty in Colom­bia, but his body could not with­stand the in­juries.

Ro­get said to date, no one has been held ac­count­able. He said the buck stops with the CoE re­port, as if in­dus­tries do not adopt the rec­om­men­da­tions, oth­er fa­tal in­ci­dents could oc­cur. He lament­ed that like the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny, there was no union at the Ni­quan plant to help pre­vent health and safe­ty haz­ards.

Ro­get said the OW­TU con­tributed heav­i­ly to the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act, as it has in­dus­try knowl­edge, ex­pe­ri­ence and com­pe­tence. He said there were prob­lems al­though Par­lia­ment passed the act, as em­ploy­ers and the Gov­ern­ment did not want to pro­claim the law as they felt it put pow­er in work­ers’ hands to en­sure their safe­ty. Em­ploy­ers al­so felt mak­ing the work en­vi­ron­ment safe would cut in­to their pock­ets, he claimed. 

Re­gard­ing the Ni­quan and Paria re­ports, Ro­get said there are vaults of re­ports gath­er­ing dust for var­i­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tions over the years. He said OW­TU had to press gov­ern­ments and em­ploy­ers to en­sure they im­ple­ment rec­om­men­da­tions.

“What do you think would hap­pen in ar­eas where you do not have a union present? It is all about not just the in­ves­ti­ga­tion for in­ves­ti­gat­ing sake of pub­lic re­la­tions and so on, but get­ting to the root cause, deal­ing with it and mak­ing sure that all of the rec­om­men­da­tions that em­anate from these in­ves­ti­ga­tions are im­ple­ment­ed to the let­ter,” he said.

Ro­get said gov­ern­ments, then and now, have ab­di­cat­ed their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties un­der the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act to put the re­quired per­son­nel in place.
He claimed the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty suf­fered from a lack of in­spec­tors, and those there are on con­tract and in­tim­i­dat­ed to en­sure gov­ern­ment work­places are safe. The OW­TU called on the Gov­ern­ment to ad­e­quate­ly staff the au­thor­i­ty and oth­er in­ves­tiga­tive bod­ies and pro­vide job se­cu­ri­ty.

He said tax­pay­ers ben­e­fit when work­ers work. He added work­ers on­ly ask that em­ploy­ers treat them with a prop­er du­ty of care to en­sure they re­turn to their fam­i­lies at the end of the day.