RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Heav­i­ly preg­nant with her fifth child, Can­da­cy Phillip, the wife of miss­ing oil rig work­er Pe­te Phillip, sum­moned every ounce of courage to re­turn to the place where her hus­band dis­ap­peared six days ago.

But she re­mains crushed by the ag­o­nis­ing weight of his ab­sence, which con­tin­ues to rob her of sleep.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Can­da­cy said she was wor­ried about their fu­ture. Pe­te had been the sole bread­win­ner, and he was ex­pect­ed to be home on Christ­mas Day. Sob­bing on the han­drest of her so­fa at her La Ro­main home, Can­da­cy ex­plained that he usu­al­ly worked for 14 days straight be­fore com­ing home to them for an­oth­er 14 days.

She said al­though his job off­shore was dan­ger­ous, he was re­luc­tant to leave it, be­liev­ing it was the on­ly way to ad­e­quate­ly care for his chil­dren.

“He used to say he can­not see the chil­dren hun­gry and suf­fer­ing,” she whis­pered.

Can­da­cy said it was the first time she had vis­it­ed the scene since part of the deck of an oil rig col­lapsed in the Gulf of Paria last Sun­day, with over 70 work­ers on board.

She re­vealed that be­fore Pe­te went miss­ing, they had named their un­born son Ja­son. Can­da­cy said her four oth­er chil­dren were con­tin­u­al­ly ask­ing for their fa­ther.

“They go on Google and Face­book and ask for him. I don’t know what to say,” she wept.

Can­da­cy al­so spoke of the im­pact the tragedy has had on their chil­dren, who are re­ceiv­ing coun­selling. De­spite this, she re­mains fear­ful for their fu­ture.

“The chil­dren say they are see­ing shad­ows and ask­ing if their fa­ther is com­ing home,” Can­da­cy said.

Can­da­cy re­called that Pe­te had voiced con­cerns about his safe­ty as an off­shore work­er, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter four Paria divers lost their lives in 2022.

“He was just say­ing that it is risky and they should put in more mea­sures to se­cure the work­ers,” Can­da­cy said.

Pe­te, 47, went miss­ing af­ter part of the deck of Rig 110, owned by Well Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd, col­lapsed in the Gulf of Paria around 3 a.m. On Thurs­day, the com­pa­ny an­nounced that the search had tran­si­tioned from res­cue to re­cov­ery, cit­ing the chal­leng­ing mar­itime con­di­tions and the slim chances of sur­vival. On Christ­mas Eve, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries an­nounced it had en­list­ed the help of in­ter­na­tion­al search teams, T&T Sal­vage, as it con­tin­ues to search for Phillip.

Mean­while, the chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Gow­tam Ma­haraj, vis­it­ed Phillip on Fri­day and arranged to help with clean­ing out her yard. He said Can­da­cy and her chil­dren need­ed emo­tion­al sup­port.

“She is ex­treme­ly stressed, and she needs to get reg­u­lar up­dates of what is hap­pen­ing,” he said. Ma­haraj called on the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency to reg­u­larise off­shore work, say­ing there were too many in­ci­dents and ac­ci­dents.