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Friday, February 21, 2025

Family of worker killed in NiQuan fire hurting over lack of info

We want answers

by

Sascha Wilson
611 days ago
20230620

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries has launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a fire at the Ni­Quan En­er­gy Trinidad Ltd plant in Pointe-a-Pierre that claimed the life of pip­efit­ter Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon.

The re­lease came hours af­ter the Ramkissoon’s fam­i­ly begged for an­swers sur­round­ing his death and ques­tioned whether the in­ci­dent was be­ing cov­ered up.

In a tear­ful in­ter­view at their St Croix Road, Lengua Vil­lage, Bar­rack­pore home yes­ter­day, his par­ents and six sib­lings said he was the back­bone of their fam­i­ly.

“I will miss my son. He is every­thing in my life,” cried his moth­er, 66-year-old Chris­tine Ramkissoon.

She said she was still try­ing to re­cov­er from the death of her el­dest daugh­ter in 2021 from COVID-19, and now she is faced with the death of an­oth­er child.

She said Ramkissoon pro­vid­ed fi­nan­cial and oth­er sup­port to her and his 72-year-old fa­ther, Dan­ny Ramkissoon, who suf­fers with health is­sues. She said they de­pend­ed heav­i­ly on him, as he was the on­ly one of her six oth­er chil­dren, two daugh­ters and four sons, with a steady in­come.

The moth­er said he had planned to help pay for her knee surgery and fix her dri­ve­way and home.

“I don’t know how I will make out. It re­al­ly hurt­ing me,” she said.

Last Thurs­day, Ramkissoon, a pip­efit­ter at Massy En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Ltd, suf­fered burns to 60 per cent of his body dur­ing an ac­ci­dent flash fire at Ni­Quan En­er­gy’s Pointe-a-Pierre plant.

Ramkissoon, 35, was flown to a spe­cial­ist burns unit in Colom­bia for treat­ment but died on Sun­day.

Wip­ing away tears, his younger sis­ter, Ruth­lane Ramkissoon-Gob­in, re­called that when they saw him at a pri­vate hos­pi­tal be­fore he was tak­en to Colom­bia, he was un­recog­nis­able.

Out­lin­ing a list of ques­tions they want an­swered, she said, “We want to know where is the in­ci­dent re­port? What ex­act­ly hap­pened to my broth­er? Where was the HSE of­fi­cers? Who checked to see if this plant was safe be­fore they sent my broth­er? It just look­ing like a cov­er-up to us be­cause we not get­ting any in­for­ma­tion. What OS­HA has to say? What the com­pa­nies have to say?”

Bare­ly able to talk through her tears, Ramkissoon’s el­dest sis­ter, Eve­laine Ramkissoon, said he nursed her back to health and cared for her son af­ter she was stabbed 14 times dur­ing a do­mes­tic in­ci­dent in 2021.

She has been stay­ing with his two daugh­ters, ages 13 and 15, since the in­ci­dent, as Ramkissoon’s wife went with Ramkissoon to Colom­bia, and was still there yes­ter­day.

While she is try­ing to put on a brave face for his chil­dren, she said his death is tear­ing her apart.

“This is so hor­ri­fy­ing. I can­not imag­ine some­one dy­ing like this,” she lament­ed.

She said she had heard that her broth­er was re­mov­ing a hose from a plat­form at the time of the in­ci­dent.

“He al­ready took down the first hose and when he was tak­ing down the sec­ond one, I heard he tried to de­tach it. The man un­der­neath saw fire com­ing and called out to him and in sec­onds he turn his back to try to fit through space a lit­tle big­ger than his body. He tried to save him­self, but he was in con­fined space and he got blast with that ex­plo­sion.”

She said her broth­er jumped and rolled on the ground as he tried to ex­tin­guish the fire.

“I saw an ar­ti­cle where they said he was ly­ing on the ground for three hours wait­ing for an am­bu­lance to come for him. Af­ter go­ing through some­thing so ter­ri­ble he was there suf­fer­ing. We don’t know what is the truth. We don’t know what went on and we want an­swers,” Eve­laine lament­ed.

His el­dest broth­er John­lane said Ramkissoon had stayed home on the day of the pre­vi­ous ex­plo­sion at Ni­Quan in 2021, and he begged him then to re­sign be­cause the job was too dan­ger­ous.

“I say broth­er, it have no mon­ey if some­thing hap­pen to you and you die. It have no mon­ey to bring you back,” he re­called.

He said Ramkissoon told him he was go­ing to leave his job this year and go full time in­to farm­ing. They were go­ing to plant cit­rus and veg­eta­bles on sev­er­al acres of land he owned.

“He sup­posed to done re­tire al­ready,” he said.

Eve­laine said they prayed for his re­cov­ery and at one point thought he would have sur­vived.

“I say praise God, thank you for an­swer­ing our prayers,” said Eve­laine.

How­ev­er, three hours lat­er they got the trag­ic news.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the min­istry said it re­ceived a re­port of the in­ci­dent, in which Ramkissoon suf­fered se­vere burn in­juries while con­duct­ing prepara­to­ry work for planned main­te­nance works on the plant.

Ex­tend­ing sin­cere con­do­lences to Ramkissoon’s fam­i­ly, the min­istry said a team com­pris­ing a pe­tro­le­um en­gi­neer, a me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer, a chem­i­cal en­gi­neer and a pe­tro­le­um in­spec­tor have been man­dat­ed to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent to de­ter­mine the root cause and con­trib­u­to­ry cause(s) of this in­ci­dent.

“The MEEI trusts that all par­ties in­volved will co­op­er­ate with its team so that this un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent can be prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed,” the re­lease stat­ed.


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