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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

OWTU rumbles over Petrotrin again

by

Sascha Wilson
2550 days ago
20180715
 Oilfield Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) members during a protest outside Petrotrin’s Point Fortin operations yesterday.

Oilfield Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) members during a protest outside Petrotrin’s Point Fortin operations yesterday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

The Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) is ac­cus­ing Petrotrin board of breach­ing their Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment (MOA) from April to over­see the re­struc­tur­ing of the com­pa­ny over an 18-month pe­ri­od.

Dur­ing a protest out­side Petrotrin’s Point Fortin build­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing, OW­TU branch pres­i­dent at Trin­mar, Ernesto Ke­sar, called on the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Petrotrin chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet to stop pro­tect­ing the “deep pock­ets” and pros­e­cute those who stole monies from Petrotrin.

He re­called that Petrotrin ex­ec­u­tives and OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get signed an MOA on April 3 to re­struc­ture the com­pa­ny. Ke­sar said they had agreed to meet on a month­ly ba­sis.

“Since this MOA has been signed we have not met with Es­pinet or any mem­bers of the board or man­age­ment team to ef­fec­tive­ly im­ple­ment the tenets of this mem­o­ran­dum. If that is not de­cep­tion and disin­gen­u­ous be­hav­iour I don’t know what is. You gave a com­mit­ment Mr Es­pinet, you gave a com­mit­ment Mr Ri­ley (ad­vi­sor to Petrotrin Board)...,” he com­plained.

In the MOA, the union pro­posed that Petrotrin is di­vid­ed in­to four en­ti­ties, Land: North and East (LNE), Trin­mar Off­shore Op­er­a­tions, Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion and the Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal. They al­so agreed to es­tab­lish a work­ing com­mit­tee com­pris­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both par­ties to “ad­dress, re­solve and agree on the four or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­tures, work process­es and skills/com­pe­ten­cies and man­pow­er re­quire­ments which will make the com­pa­ny in­ter­na­tion­al­ly com­pet­i­tive, thus en­sur­ing its sur­vival, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and prof­itabil­i­ty.

“We are call­ing on you all to­day to get back to the ta­ble and sit with the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union and help us re­or­gan­ise and fix Petrotrin in the in­ter­est of all of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Ke­sar said.

Based on an an­nu­al re­port, he said it has been es­ti­mat­ed that Petrotrin would have con­tributed $16 bil­lion to the econ­o­my be­tween 2011 to 2017.

“When top-class politi­cians go on the me­dia every day and they say to the pub­lic that Petrotrin owes the Gov­ern­ment for so much of years mon­ey I am say­ing that is not true,” he added.

Ke­sar al­so claimed three se­nior of­fi­cials were al­lowed to “bump up” their salaries be­fore they re­tired and were now get­ting pen­sions equiv­a­lent to the salary they would have had pre­vi­ous­ly when a pen­sion is sup­posed to be two-thirds of your salary.

“So these fel­las are en­joy­ing pen­sions of the Chief Jus­tice and the Prime Min­is­ter, these are the kind of pen­sions. That in it­self is bad but they did not re­mit their con­tri­bu­tions to the pen­sion plan so you took monies and you did not re­mit it and I am say­ing, Dr Row­ley, Wil­fred Es­pinet, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy present and past you all owe the pub­lic the du­ty to en­sure that these things are brought to jus­tice,” he added.


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