RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to last month’s is­land­wide black­out, Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union pres­i­dent-gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get claims T&TEC’s fail­ure to fill va­can­cies for 300 lines­men con­tributed to the in­ci­dent, as lines are now be­ing cleared by un­qual­i­fied con­trac­tors.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the OW­TU’s Para­mount Build­ing in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, Ro­get gave de­tails of the black­out from the union’s per­spec­tive for the first time.

“That black­out was not caused by T&TEC work­ers. It was caused by the in­ef­fi­cien­cy of man­age­ment of T&TEC and the gov­er­nance arrange­ment,” Ro­get said.

He ex­plained, “A tree fell on T&TEC lines and those lines wob­bled in­to the elec­tri­cal field and tripped the en­tire sys­tem. The union would have ad­vised them to make al­ter­ations to pre­vent such an oc­cur­rence. It hap­pened be­cause that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was placed in hands of con­trac­tors to do line clear­ing.”

Ro­get said many tech­ni­cal as­pects of T&TEC’s op­er­a­tions have been con­tract­ed out, jeop­ar­dis­ing the safe­ty of work­ers.

He al­so said the OW­TU’s ef­forts to meet with Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les to dis­cuss these is­sues have been un­suc­cess­ful to date.

“If he does not want to meet with the union’s ex­ec­u­tive, he will be forced to meet with all of the work­ers (at T&TEC),” Ro­get warned.

He al­so re­vealed that the OW­TU had filed an ap­peal against an In­dus­tri­al Court judge­ment that gave T&TEC work­ers a ze­ro-per cent in­crease for the pe­ri­od 2015 to 2017. If work­ers ac­cept­ed this un­fair rul­ing, Ro­get said there would be no more in­creas­es for the pe­ri­od 2018 to 2022.

“If there is one group of work­ers who de­serve a prop­er ad­just­ment in their wages, it is the T&TEC work­ers,” Ro­get said, adding, “Those work­ers were dealt an un­fair blow and we are not go­ing to ac­cept ze­ro-ze­ro-ze­ro!”

He re­vealed that the mat­ter was filed in the Court of Ap­peal on Thurs­day to over­rule the In­dus­tri­al Court rul­ing which was made on Feb­ru­ary 18 for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 2015 to De­cem­ber 2017. The judge­ment was de­liv­ered by a three-mem­ber team com­pris­ing Lawrence Achong, chair­man of the es­sen­tial ser­vices di­vi­sion, and mem­bers Vin­cent Cabr­era and Michelle Austin.

Say­ing this rul­ing was un­fair to the es­ti­mat­ed 2,800 em­ploy­ees who pro­vide a re­li­able sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty, Ro­get said T&TEC was fac­ing the same po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence from the Gov­ern­ment that led to the clo­sure of Petrotrin. 

Point­ing to the prof­its made by ANSAM­cAL and An­gos­tu­ra, Ro­get said this would not be pos­si­ble if these com­pa­nies did not have elec­tric­i­ty. He not­ed that more than one-third of the T&TEC labour force is now con­tract work­ers, not­ing that these work­ers were un­skilled and in­com­pe­tent to ex­e­cute projects in haz­ardous en­vi­ron­ments.

Ro­get did not re­veal any da­ta about the num­ber of ac­ci­dents that have been re­port­ed at T&TEC but said this da­ta will be giv­en to the me­dia soon. He said T&TEC did a man­pow­er au­dit but not­ed that the au­dit has not been pre­sent­ed to the OW­TU, which is the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the claims yes­ter­day, T&TEC gen­er­al man­ag­er Kelvin Ram­sook de­nied there was a short­age of 300 lines­men at the com­mis­sion. He re­fused to com­ment on the black­out un­til the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­plete.

Ram­sook said T&TEC had suc­ces­sion plan­ning and con­tin­u­ous train­ing of staff, not­ing that the ze­ro per cent rul­ing was up­held by the court.