A Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (TTEC) em­ploy­ee who was sus­pect­ed of con­tract­ing COVID-19 and was test­ed a week ago is still await­ing his test re­sults.

How­ev­er, the em­ploy­ee may have pon­tential­ly ex­posed at four col­leagues to the virus. The sit­u­a­tion with the five em­ploy­ees, who are cur­rent­ly un­well and ex­hibit­ing flu-like symp­toms, is said to be caus­ing jit­ters among oth­er staff and the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU).

OW­TU vice-pres­i­dent Pe­ter Burke said on Sun­day that the em­ploy­ees are un­well and have been self-quar­an­ti­ning at their homes while two peo­ple from the group had so far been test­ed. The oth­er three are await­ing the out­come of those tests be­fore be­ing test­ed them­selves, he said.

“I don’t know why the Gov­ern­ment is be­ing so stingy with their test­ing,” Burke said in an in­ter­view.

He said the first work­er who com­plained of feel­ing un­well and was test­ed a week ago was still await­ing re­sults yes­ter­day.

“The com­pa­ny doc­tor gave him med­ica­tion and he has been quar­an­tined at home, tak­ing the meds and is start­ing to im­prove. At one point he was do­ing so bad­ly that he was hos­pi­talised,” Burke said.

But now with the med­ica­tion work­ing and the em­ploy­ee on the mend, Burke is won­der­ing why the state is tak­ing so long to pro­duce the man’s re­sults.

“Is it a case of wait­ing un­til he is bet­ter so we don’t know whether he had it or not?” Burke asked.

He said em­ploy­ee be­lieves he was first ex­posed when he re­port­ed to a sub-sta­tion in Port-of-Spain that need­ed emer­gency re­pairs. The same crew got called out again when there was an­oth­er trans­former is­sue days lat­er.

“He could have ex­posed the crew be­cause they are all un­well and we don’t know if they have it,” Burke said, claim­ing T&TEC has pro­vid­ed PPE gear but it was “sub-stan­dard”.

Burke said he did not think the com­pa­ny was do­ing enough to pro­tect work­ers dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. He said when the work­er got ill he was tend­ed to by the com­pa­ny doc­tor and sent home but not di­rect­ed to con­tact the Min­istry of Health or CMO’s of­fice.

“The com­pa­ny doc­tor calls him dai­ly to check on him but to date, no test re­sults, no con­tact trac­ing,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day sent ques­tions about the is­sue to T&TEC’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Kelvin Ram­sook.

Guardian Me­dia lat­er re­ceived a mes­sage from T&TEC’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion man­ag­er, Annabelle Bras­nell, which read: “My in­for­ma­tion is that our com­pa­ny doc­tor has not been en­gaged.”

Bras­nell said the ques­tion about the de­layed re­sults should be di­rect­ed to the Min­istry of Health.

On whether the em­ploy­ee should re­turn to work when the quar­an­tine pe­ri­od ends even with­out a test re­sult, Bras­nell ad­vised, “The em­ploy­ee should con­tin­ue to li­aise with their man­ag­er/su­per­vi­sor on their pos­si­ble re­turn to work. T&TEC will con­tin­ue to be guid­ed by the MoH on COVID-19 re­lat­ed is­sues and I have no rea­son to doubt that the Min­istry would pro­vide the nec­es­sary guid­ance.”

Guardian Me­dia called Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh but he asked to be texted in­stead and then did not re­spond when Guardian Me­dia com­plied.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) Dr Roshan Paras­ram but he too did not com­ment.