Kevon Felmine

With the odd clean­ing job in­ad­e­quate to set­tle his mount­ing debt, fired Cen­tral Trinidad Steel Ltd (Cen­trin) op­er­a­tor David Fran­cis thought he would end his trou­bles when he com­mit­ted sui­cide out­side his Cou­va home on Thurs­day night.

It was a shock­er for mem­bers of the Steel Work­ers Union (SWUTT) who blamed the tragedy on the Gov­ern­ment and Cen­trin's par­ent com­pa­ny, Bhag­wans­ingh Group of Com­pa­nies Ltd, since the for­mer work­ers have not been paid sev­er­ance ben­e­fits since they were re­trenched on Jan­u­ary 11.

On April 13, SWUTT filed a court ap­pli­ca­tion to con­test Cen­trin over the non-pay­ment of sev­er­ance ben­e­fits.

On Feb­ru­ary 24, Fran­cis, 50, a P5 (Pul­pit) op­er­a­tor at the com­pa­ny since April 2004 was among the 200 work­ers ter­mi­nat­ed by Cen­trin as the com­pa­ny shut down op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas. It came as a re­sult of Arcelor­Mit­tal's clo­sure. Arcelor­Mit­tal pro­vid­ed raw ma­te­r­i­al for Cen­trin to pro­duce its met­al prod­ucts.

The Guardian con­tact­ed the Bhag­wans­ingh Group of Com­pa­nies Ltd yes­ter­day but was told the di­rec­tors Ter­ry Bhag­wans­ingh and Vi­noo Ra­moutar and any­one else with the au­thor­i­ty to speak on be­half of the com­pa­ny had al­ready left for the week­end.

Fran­cis' com­mon-law wife, Chan­drawatie Nan­lal, said the fa­ther of three had a loan at Ven­ture Cred­it Union to pay as their house is un­der ren­o­va­tion. Speak­ing at their home in Per­se­ver­ance, she said Fran­cis was search­ing for a new job and in the mean­time they would clean yards for in­come.

She said every­thing was well in their 17-year-old re­la­tion­ship with them at­tend­ing a boat ride last Sun­day and cook­ing to­geth­er on Thurs­day.

Nan­lal said he ap­peared his usu­al jol­ly self, but while watch­ing tele­vi­sion to­geth­er in their bed­room on Thurs­day night, he got up and left the room. Think­ing that he was go­ing out to have a drink, she said she walked on­to the porch to en­sure the door was closed and found him hang­ing from a rope which was tied to a rafter. He was al­ready dead by the time Cou­va po­lice ar­rived. In­ves­ti­ga­tors clas­si­fied the death as a sui­cide.

"I told him if he was go­ing out the road to just push in the door so when he came back he would not have to call me. When I watched my phone, I saw it was 10.15 so I said to my­self, 'let me get up and see if he closed the door.' When I got up, I saw the door open and when I walked up, I saw him hang­ing," Nan­lal said.

With tears stream­ing down her cheeks, she said she called her son and told him his fa­ther was dead, but he too was in dis­be­lief, say­ing that dad­dy was just stand­ing there.

"We did not have any ar­gu­ment or any­thing. I would not lie. You see me and David, we do live re­al good. Any­thing I want, he does buy it. I don't have any prob­lem. If he drink, I do not vex," she said.

She was un­able to say why he de­cid­ed to end his life, as he nev­er gave any in­di­ca­tion that he was de­pressed or frus­trat­ed. Even his broth­er Shel­don said his fam­i­ly nev­er saw it com­ing. He showed an un­fin­ished kitchen with cup­boards that the fa­ther of three, who is al­so a ma­son, was build­ing to make his fam­i­ly home more com­fort­able.

Close friend and for­mer col­league Ra­jesh Ba­boolal said he spoke to him around 3 pm Thurs­day and they dis­cussed plans to look for work. He said there was an up­com­ing job that Fran­cis and two oth­er friends were sup­posed to start.

Union wary of more trau­ma

While Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus has set May 18 as the date for con­sul­ta­tion on the amend­ment of the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits Act, SWUTT sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent Ramku­mar Nar­i­nesingh said gov­ern­ment's in­ter­ven­tion has to come now be­fore more lives are lost.

Nar­i­nesingh said the union had warned of the se­vere psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact the job loss­es would have on work­ers and it was fur­ther strained when they could not ac­cess mon­ey from their Unit Trust plans. He said while cit­i­zens are dy­ing, Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to take a hands-off ap­proach.

"The union has al­ways warned of this type of sce­nario giv­en the mag­ni­tude of what has hap­pened with Arcelor­Mit­tal, Cen­trin and Tube City IMS. We are hop­ing that this type of sit­u­a­tion does not hap­pen again, but our heads are not in the sand. We know that work­ers are un­der a lot of fi­nan­cial duress and we are say­ing that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of this hap­pen­ing again is very re­al.

"There­fore, we are say­ing what­ev­er re­me­di­al ac­tion that has to be tak­en, has to be tak­en now. It can­not wait for no May 18 con­sul­ta­tion to take place be­cause peo­ple are lit­er­al­ly suf­fer­ing."

Nar­i­nesingh said an­oth­er col­league, Richard Coombs, is in se­ri­ous con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal af­ter crash­ing in­to a truck last night. He said Coombs had to re­sort to us­ing his car as a PH taxi since be­ing dis­missed. He said Gov­ern­ment need­ed to pro­tect work­ers from lo­cal com­pa­nies that were adopt­ing Arcelor­Mit­tal's at­ti­tude in shut­ting down op­er­a­tions and leav­ing work­ers pen­ni­less.