A Mara­bel­la man and two chil­dren fell ill and had to be tak­en away by am­bu­lance yes­ter­day dur­ing a protest by peo­ple af­fect­ed by last Tues­day's oil leak.Ake­mo Cobom, 27, of Silk Cot­ton Road, Mara­bel­la, col­lapsed and was helped in­to an am­bu­lance be­fore be­ing tak­en to the Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal with res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems. The two chil­dren, whose names were not giv­en, al­so com­plained of feel­ing un­well and were al­so tak­en to hos­pi­tal.

Yes­ter­day Mara­bel­la res­i­dent Corey Green said Cobom and the two chil­dren had com­plained of feel­ing up­set be­fore they left their homes to join fel­low res­i­dents out­side Petrotrin's of­fice at the Pointe-a-Pierre round­about.Short­ly af­ter 11 am the emer­gency health ser­vices were con­tact­ed to take Cobom and the chil­dren away when their con­di­tion de­te­ri­o­rat­ed af­ter be­ing ex­posed to the scorch­ing sun.

Green said: "Ake­mo said he was not feel­ing well since this morn­ing. I telling him to go to the hos­pi­tal but he want­ed to come out in the protest but he start to feel more bad when he come out in the protest and he col­lapse."Right now res­i­dents say they will con­tin­ue to protest un­til Petrotrin take them se­ri­ous­ly. Peo­ple get­ting sick."

Al­most 50 res­i­dents, led by Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get, be­gan protest­ing at 8.30 am. Some marched from their Mara­bel­la homes to the round­about car­ry­ing plac­ards, chant­i­ng and beat­ing buck­ets.They claimed Petrotrin was not ad­dress­ing their health con­cerns and called for com­pen­sa­tion and re­lo­ca­tion in the wake of last Tues­day's oil leak at the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

Some 17,000 bar­rels of slop oil es­caped from a tank when it rup­tured. An es­ti­mat­ed 5,000 bar­rels leaked in­to the Guaracara Riv­er caus­ing dis­tress to Mara­bel­la res­i­dents.Yes­ter­day res­i­dents chant­ed "we want jus­tice, we want jus­tice" un­der the watch­ful eyes of Petrotrin se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers.There were some tense mo­ments when the of­fi­cers formed a chain around the res­i­dents to keep them from block­ing the en­trance to Petrotrin's of­fice.

Ro­get and his ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers de­scribed that as in­tim­i­da­tion and bul­ly­ing and they too formed a hu­man bar­ri­er to al­low the protest to con­tin­ue un­hin­dered. Po­lice of­fi­cers were al­so present.Ro­get, ad­dress­ing res­i­dents, said: "We are pre­pared to deal with the po­lice. We are not break­ing any law. We are peace­ful­ly protest­ing. We came here with one thing in mind that is to con­tin­ue to high­light the plight of the vil­lagers and the fence­line com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dents."

Green said res­i­dents were up­set that al­though they were out­side Petrotrin's gate for more than three hours, no one from the com­pa­ny came out to meet with them."Some­body could have come out and meet with the res­i­dents and as­sure them that they are tak­ing step to ad­dress their health con­cerns. All they want is as­sur­ance and they not do­ing that right now. They need to as­sure peo­ple that their health is im­por­tant to them but right now they just cov­er­ing up," Green said.

He al­so al­leged that he and his wife were of­fered $30,000 for med­ical ex­pens­es by a com­pa­ny of­fi­cial to keep qui­et and not protest."That is for she to go to Au­gus­tus Long un­til she have the ba­by. I not stand­ing for that. My wife say she not trust­ing that to go to Au­gus­tus Long so they will not tell us if any­thing is wrong with the ba­by," Green said.Ro­get said yes­ter­day's protest ac­tion was suc­cess­ful but hint­ed at fur­ther ac­tion by the union, though he did not di­vulge what it might be.

He warned res­i­dents that Petrotrin would try to bribe its way through the oil leak fall­out and the many health prob­lems the res­i­dents now faced.Al­lis­ter Cephas, spokesman for the res­i­dents, said there had been no im­prove­ment in their liv­ing con­di­tions and peo­ple were still falling ill."Peo­ple health con­di­tions are the same way. They are not putting any health plans in place. They have not evac­u­at­ed any­one. The con­di­tion still as it is.

"Peo­ple get­ting up with di­ar­rhoea, swollen faces and so on. We need jus­tice. Jus­tice must be served to the poor peo­ple, the poor­er class of peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly Mara­bel­la," Cephas said.

MP meet­ing can­celled

Pointe-a-Pierre MP, Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol Mc Leod, was ex­pect­ed to meet with res­i­dents yes­ter­day at 8.30 am, ac­cord­ing to a me­dia no­tice is­sued on Mon­day.The no­tice was re­called on Mon­day evening. No rea­son was giv­en for the can­cel­la­tion.Since last week res­i­dents have been com­plain­ing that Mc Leod had not vis­it­ed the area to hear their con­cerns or meet with them and have been call­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter to re­move him as their MP.

Ro­get: Livesat risk

Ro­get, in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, said the in­ci­dent un­der­scored what the res­i­dents have been com­plain­ing about, that their lives were in dan­ger."Their lives are clear­ly in jeop­ardy and in dan­ger and it is painful­ly ev­i­dent that Petrotrin is not do­ing near­ly enough to ad­dress their con­cerns. That is why this event took place. We will con­tin­ue to high­light these is­sues. They have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the com­mu­ni­ties," he added.

He said it was al­so of con­cern that the reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies, such as the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and the Oc­cu­pa­tion Health and Safe­ty Au­thor­i­ty (OSH), were not speak­ing out.He said there ap­peared to be "col­lu­sion" among those bod­ies and "a com­mon in­ter­est and has noth­ing to do with the en­vi­ron­ment and health of the res­i­dents."