Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

“Look how long and is noth­ing. They don’t care. I can’t get over that, be­cause I don’t know what’s go­ing on,” sobbed Pa­tri­cia Phillip, moth­er of rig work­er Pe­te Phillip, who fell over­board af­ter the rig he was work­ing on col­lapsed off Point Fortin eight months ago.

As Phillip’s el­dest son re­ceived his CSEC ex­am re­sults yes­ter­day, Pa­tri­cia lament­ed that it was an­oth­er mile­stone marked with­out his fa­ther.

“You know how he feel­ing to know that his fa­ther not around for him to know what he do?” she asked.

At her La Ro­main home yes­ter­day, Pa­tri­cia ex­pressed the fam­i­ly’s on­go­ing pain and un­cer­tain­ty. Bury­ing her face in her hands as she wept con­tin­u­ous­ly, the moth­er lament­ed, “When I study my son down in that wa­ter and they say­ing they know which part he is. They sup­posed to send for what­ev­er in Amer­i­ca and can’t send for it.”

The heart­bro­ken moth­er said she was in­formed that ex­plo­ration work con­tin­ues near the col­lapsed rig while she has heard noth­ing from the com­pa­ny for months.

“The on­ly thing they will find is just bone, but if we get his clothes or some­thing, we could still have a fu­ner­al or say prayers. But we can’t do any­thing be­cause we don’t know what is go­ing on. We’re wait­ing on them. We don’t know how long again we have to wait,” she said through her tears.

Since the in­ci­dent, the moth­er said, she has en­dured sleep­less nights.

“I study him every day. All hour of the night I can’t sleep.”

Phillip was among 75 per­son­nel aboard Well Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd’s Rig 110 when it par­tial­ly col­lapsed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3.09 am on De­cem­ber 22, 2024.

Every­one ex­cept Phillip was even­tu­al­ly ac­count­ed for, but one work­er was in­jured. Days lat­er, Well Ser­vices tran­si­tioned from res­cue to re­cov­ery ef­forts, but lat­er ceased op­er­a­tions, cit­ing the need for spe­cialised equip­ment due to the chal­leng­ing and in­tri­cate na­ture of the op­er­a­tions.

The com­pa­ny last is­sued a state­ment on this mat­ter on March 7, and since then, his fam­i­ly has been plead­ing for re­cov­ery ef­forts to re­sume. When Phillip dis­ap­peared, his wife was preg­nant, and he had five chil­dren.

In Feb­ru­ary his wife gave birth to a bounc­ing ba­by boy. The com­pa­ny, how­ev­er, be­gan giv­ing his wife week­ly fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance and has since con­duct­ed ren­o­va­tions at her home.

At­tempts to reach Well Ser­vices, both by email and What­sApp, were un­suc­cess­ful. En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal could al­so not be reached for com­ment.