Derek Achong

Un­der the threat of po­ten­tial protests from work­ers which could af­fect thou­sands of com­muters, the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) has be­gun re­mov­ing po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous as­bestos from two main work­spaces at its South Quay, Port-of-Spain, head­quar­ters. The cor­po­ra­tion's gen­er­al man­ag­er, Ronald Forde, said so yes­ter­day dur­ing a me­dia tour of the fa­cil­i­ty to high­light the start of the re­moval process which was ini­ti­at­ed al­most four months af­ter in­de­pen­dent tests re­vealed the pres­ence of the tox­ic build­ing ma­te­r­i­al.

Forde said the de­lay was caused by the use of a "clear and trans­par­ent" ten­der­ing process for the over $1 mil­lion con­tract to re­move the as­bestos.When asked why pe­ri­od­ic test­ing had not been done on the build­ings con­sid­er­ing their age, Forde said: "Be­cause no­body knew at the time the ma­te­r­i­al was as­bestos. There is no his­to­ry of any em­ploy­ee of the PTSC who has gone down with any ail­ment re­lat­ed to as­bestos."

He al­so ad­mit­ted PTSC's op­er­a­tions had been ham­pered by the process and the on­go­ing re­pairs but claimed its cus­tomers were not af­fect­ed great­ly."We have been very re­silient dur­ing this pe­ri­od be­cause we have been mov­ing our num­bers. We may not be keep­ing all of the tight sched­ules but we have been lob­by­ing with our cus­tomers and our num­bers have stood up," Forde said.

As he al­so con­fessed that the cor­po­ra­tion was short of al­most 100 bus­es to op­er­ate at full ca­pac­i­ty, Forde an­nounced the short­age was ex­pect­ed to be re­duced with the ar­rival of 35 new com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG) bus­es from Chi­na in ear­ly No­vem­ber.Dur­ing the tour, Forde said work was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in three weeks on two af­fect­ed ar­eas, cen­tral work­shop and the bus dri­vers' lounge.

The two build­ings were cov­ered in sealed tents out­fit­ted with de­con­t­a­m­i­na­tion zones, while work­ers at both lo­ca­tions were seen wear­ing pro­tec­tive suits and masks.Branch pres­i­dent of the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU) Mar­cus Grannum, who was present dur­ing tour, praised the cor­po­ra­tion for its ef­forts in ad­dress­ing the is­sue but said it was long over­due.

How­ev­er, Grannum said there were sev­er­al oth­er health and safe­ty is­sues on the com­pound, in­clud­ing flood­ed ser­vice bays, oil-filled drains and faulty diesel stor­age tanks, which, he said, need­ed to be ad­dressed ur­gent­ly.

"It's not that we don't want to work. The Gov­ern­ment has a lot of mon­ey to do a lot of things ex­cept for the back­bone of the na­tion's work­ers," Grannum said.