Rhon­dor Dowlat

An­oth­er mul­ti-na­tion­al com­pa­ny is set to close its doors in T&T and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 55 em­ploy­ees are to be sent home.

Staff at Car­il­lion (Caribbean) Lim­it­ed, a lo­cal sub­sidiary of Cana­da-based Car­il­lion Plc, say they have been of­fered en­hanced Vol­un­tary Sep­a­ra­tion Pack­ages (VSEP) as its lo­cal op­er­a­tions are ex­pect­ed to wind up at year's end.

The com­pa­ny is in the busi­ness of con­struc­tion, civ­il, elec­tri­cal and me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing and had been in­volved in ma­jor projects in T&T.

In March, Arcelor­Mit­tal shut down its op­er­a­tions send­ing home 644 em­ploy­ees, while three oth­er lo­cal com­pa­nies which de­pend­ed on the steel plant to op­er­ate al­so closed shop and sent home their work­force.

A se­nior mem­ber of staff, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said the hu­man re­sources man­ag­er from Cana­da's head­quar­ters vis­it­ed the Brick­field, Wa­ter­loo Road, Cara­pichaima fa­cil­i­ty re­cent­ly and told em­ploy­ees about the di­rec­tion the com­pa­ny is now forced to take be­cause of the down­turn in the econ­o­my.

The em­ploy­ees were of­fered VSEP pack­ages, in­clu­sive of all en­ti­tle­ments and hol­i­days, and will be giv­en ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 days no­tice of who is next to go home. The process is ex­pect­ed to be on a phased ba­sis, with the first phase be­gin­ning at the end of this month. In­clud­ing in the first five to go home is a se­nior man­ag­er who has been em­ployed at the com­pa­ny for about 15 years.

"It is on­ly ver­bal no­tice that em­ploy­ees are be­ing giv­en and in every month, five names will be giv­en as to who are next to go home with their re­spec­tive pack­ages. The com­pa­ny is do­ing it smart­ly un­der the lim­it so that they won't have to in­form the Min­is­ter (of Labour) as to what is hap­pen­ing," the em­ploy­ee said.

The em­ploy­ee said man­age­ment has al­leged­ly giv­en in­struc­tions not to take on projects that would ex­ceed No­vem­ber/De­cem­ber this year.

Asked how mem­bers of staff are cop­ing, the em­ploy­ee said: "Staff are dis­ap­point­ed and sad­dened but they are do­ing what they are sup­posed to do be­cause they know they have to go home there is no op­tion there.

"The fort­night­ly paid work­ers, though, have no clue as to what is hap­pen­ing. They are ques­tion­ing cer­tain things but no one is telling them any­thing."

Re­ports are that the last of staff mem­bers to go in No­vem­ber will be the per­son who holds the po­si­tion of time­keep­er.

Car­il­lion Cana­da's Di­rec­tor, Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, An­drew Brown in an emailed re­sponse to ques­tions said due to the drop in oil prices over the past year and the cur­rent eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in T&T, Car­il­lion had to take steps to re­main com­pet­i­tive. He said the com­pa­ny has be­come more se­lec­tive in the works ten­dered and will fo­cus on the core skills of fab­ri­ca­tion works at the Wa­ter­loo De­pot, in­clud­ing off­shore in­stal­la­tion and fab­ric main­te­nance works.

"Be­cause of this re­fined fo­cus, there has been a re­duc­tion in the size of the lo­cal work­force," Brown said.

How­ev­er, Brown as­sured that Car­il­lion will de­liv­er on cur­rent con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions while main­tain­ing ex­pect­ed stan­dards of safe­ty and qual­i­ty.