Rose­marie Sant

Days af­ter an­nounc­ing the planned clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, board chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet is warn­ing em­ploy­ees about in­creased lev­els of ab­sen­teeism. He has al­so is­sued a strong cau­tion to any­one who may be con­tem­plat­ing acts of vi­o­lence to dam­age the com­pa­ny’s as­sets, say­ing they may be dis­qual­i­fied from get­ting any form of ex­it com­pen­sa­tion.

In an in­ter­nal memo to staff dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 3 ti­tled “Clar­i­fi­ca­tion on Cur­rent Is­sues,” a copy of which the T&T Guardian ob­tained, Es­pinet ad­mit­ted the com­pa­ny recog­nised that there was a lot of “un­cer­tain­ty and anx­i­ety” with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

He not­ed that since the an­nounce­ment of the re­fin­ery shut­down there had been a “no­tice­able in­crease in ab­sen­teeism through­out the com­pa­ny,” which can prove to be “counter-pro­duc­tive.”

But Es­pinet said while the board had an­nounced plans for a “re­struc­tur­ing,” no em­ploy­ee had been giv­en “no­tice of ter­mi­na­tion” of their em­ploy­ment and as a re­sult, there had been no change in their “oblig­a­tion” to the com­pa­ny. He ad­vised em­ploy­ees to “re-fa­mil­iarise” them­selves with the Ab­sen­teeism Pol­i­cy, point­ing to the sec­tions on Pol­i­cy, Re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and Pro­ce­dure.

Es­pinet not­ed some “key high­lights” of the pol­i­cy, the first re­lat­ing to ex­ces­sive ab­sen­teeism ex­ceed­ing nine days in six con­sec­u­tive months, which is sub­ject to dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion up to and in­clud­ing dis­missal.

The Petrotrin chair­man said the com­pa­ny was “par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive” about the in­creas­es in “stress and anx­i­ety” the loss of em­ploy­ment may cause and re­mained open to sug­ges­tions in ad­dress­ing the con­cerns. But he said psy­cho­log­i­cal and fi­nan­cial coun­selling and ad­vice are avail­able to “all em­ploy­ees and their fam­i­lies for a pe­ri­od of six months.”

Un­der the sub-head­ing “Se­cur­ing Our As­sets” in the memo, Es­pinet said the com­pa­ny recog­nised that there may be per­sons who may de­cide to “re­sort to vi­o­lence and or seek to dam­age as­sets.” But he said any such ac­tion would be “un­law­ful and con­sti­tutes a breach of em­ploy­ment” and will “dis­qual­i­fy of­fend­ing in­di­vid­u­als from re­ceiv­ing any form of ex­it com­pen­sa­tion.”

Es­pinet urged em­ploy­ees and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives to keep true to their se­ri­ous oblig­a­tion of en­sur­ing that as the coun­try’s on­ly fu­el sup­pli­er they “main­tain an un­in­ter­rupt­ed sup­ply of fu­el for the na­tion.”

The memo not­ed that while Oc­to­ber 1 is the start of the tran­si­tion that would not be the “last day of work for every Petrotrin em­ploy­ee.”

The tim­ing and du­ra­tion of the tran­si­tion, ac­cord­ing to the memo from Es­pinet, will be de­ter­mined by “our abil­i­ty to do it smooth­ly, ef­fi­cient­ly and safe­ly over the next few months,” as he point­ed out that it would be “im­prac­ti­cal to have a sin­gle hard stop date.”

The staff was told the com­pa­ny was now in the process of im­ple­ment­ing the “most prac­ti­cal ap­proach to tran­si­tion the com­pa­ny, with­out neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ing the busi­ness.” A smooth tran­si­tion, ac­cord­ing to Es­pinet, re­quired an “over­lap be­tween the modes of op­er­a­tion.” In the mean­time, he said Petrotrin’s busi­ness con­tin­ues to op­er­ate as usu­al, adding it was im­per­a­tive that the com­pa­ny con­tin­ue to man­age its as­sets and op­er­a­tions “re­spon­si­bly be­cause we have fi­nan­cial and oth­er oblig­a­tions to our sup­pli­ers, con­trac­tors, cus­tomers and most im­por­tant­ly you our em­ploy­ees.”

Es­pinet al­so in­formed the work­ers that de­tails on com­pen­sa­tion and ben­e­fits are cur­rent­ly be­ing fi­nalised and will be com­mu­ni­cat­ed as soon as they are com­plet­ed.

“We do not want to pro­vide any ap­prox­i­ma­tions or any in­for­ma­tion that is not com­plete­ly ac­cu­rate,” he said, not­ing this would lead to “greater un­cer­tain­ty.”