Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@guardian.co.tt

Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­to has con­firmed that Ni­Quan En­er­gy Trinidad Ltd (Ni­Quan) nev­er re­port­ed the fire which took the life of Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice (TTFS).

And Bris­to says it is quite con­cern­ing that the TTFS was not ap­prised by the en­er­gy com­pa­ny over what tran­spired at its Pointe-a-Pierre plant last Thurs­day.

“It is of con­cern for the T&T Fire Ser­vice, as all fire-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents, in­clud­ing death by fire, must be re­port­ed to the Fire Ser­vices,” Bris­to said yes­ter­day

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via text mes­sages, Bris­to said the fail­ure of Ni­Quan to alert the Fire Ser­vice when the ac­ci­dent oc­cured makes it hard­er for them to as­sist in a probe the mat­ter go­ing for­ward. In any event, he said from here, it will mean a lit­tle more than just Fire Ser­vice in­volve­ment.

“That will re­quire the in­ter­ven­tion of the state. In­ves­ti­ga­tion af­ter the scene is cleared makes it more dif­fi­cult,” he said.

Bris­to did not an­swer any fur­ther ques­tions.

Nei­ther did the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Stu­art Young, nor Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds. Guardian Me­dia asked both Min­is­ters if they were aware that the TTFS was kept out of the loop but no im­me­di­ate re­spons­es were giv­en.

Guardian Me­dia al­so at­tempt­ed to con­tact the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (OS­HA) in Trinidad but all calls to its com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment went unan­swered.

Ni­Quan al­so failed to pro­vide a re­sponse.

But shad­ow Min­is­ter of Labour and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cou­va South, Rudranath In­dars­ingh, said he was not sur­prised by Ni­Quan’s ac­tions.

“This fur­ther in­ten­si­fies the call for a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion by OS­HA in­to this very trag­ic ac­ci­dent. If the Gov­ern­ment is not will­ing to up­hold health and safe­ty in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors, then it’s best we aban­don the OSH Act,” In­dars­ingh said.

In­dars­ingh said this lat­est de­vel­op­ment al­so fur­ther in­ten­si­fies his sus­pi­cion of an at­tempt­ed cov­er-up.

“This is why I asked the Prime Min­is­ter in the Par­lia­ment, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion sec­tion 47 of the OSH Act, whether the ac­ci­dent scene was pre­served by health and safe­ty of­fi­cers and up to to­day we have not heard that, and while we have heard from Min­is­ter Stu­art Young that a pro­hi­bi­tion no­tice has been served on Ni­Quan by OS­HA, we have not been told about the state of the ac­ci­dent site.”

Ramkissoon, a pip­efit­ter at Massy En­er­gy En­gi­neered So­lu­tions Lim­it­ed, suf­fered burns to 60 per cent of his body dur­ing an ac­ci­dent flash fire at the plant on June 15. The 35-year-old, fa­ther of two, was flown to a Spe­cial­ist Burns Unit in Colom­bia for treat­ment but he passed away on Sun­day.

This was the sec­ond ma­jor in­ci­dent that re­sult­ed in op­er­a­tions at the Ni­Quan plant be­ing sus­pend­ed.

Fol­low­ing an ex­plo­sion in April 2021, the plant op­er­a­tions stalled but recom­menced on May 28, 2022.