Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer em­ploy­ees of Lennox Pe­tro­le­um Ser­vices Lim­it­ed who were sent home in 2017 claim they are owed more than $30 mil­lion in retroac­tive wages.

The 22 em­ploy­ees, who worked on the Rowan XL 2 off­shore rig op­er­at­ed by British Pe­tro­le­um, staged a protest out­side bpTT’s Head Of­fice on Vic­to­ria Av­enue, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day de­mand­ing to be paid mon­ey they were award­ed when the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) suc­cess­ful­ly pur­sued a trade dis­pute in court on their be­half.

Al­though they won the court mat­ter the work­ers have not been paid, so they are chal­leng­ing all the com­pa­nies in­volved in the project, in­clud­ing Lennox Pe­tro­le­um, the labour force con­trac­tors, British Pe­tro­le­um and bpTT.

OW­TU Ed­u­ca­tion and Re­search Of­fi­cer Ozzi War­wick, who took part in yes­ter­day’s protest said, “When these work­ers took a stand for health and safe­ty on the rig, in­stead of be­ing re­ward­ed for their ef­forts to en­sure safe­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion on this rig, they faced penal­ties and pros­e­cu­tion. This is un­just, un­fair, and a clear vi­o­la­tion of the prin­ci­ples of hu­man dig­ni­ty.

“We want to make it abun­dant­ly clear that these com­pa­nies have reaped sub­stan­tial prof­its thanks to the hard work and ded­i­ca­tion of these in­di­vid­u­als. What’s trag­ic is that these work­ers worked on a BP rig through Rowan, the drilling com­pa­ny, for near­ly sev­en years, from ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2010 to 2017.”

War­wick, who claimed BP and Rowan have prof­it­ed from the project and share­hold­ers have re­ceived div­i­dends, asked, “So why can’t these work­ers re­ceive their well-de­served retroac­tive pay? Why must they con­tin­u­al­ly gath­er and protest just to claim what they right­ful­ly earned? In­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies are evad­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to our cit­i­zens, our work­ers, even af­ter these work­ers have gen­er­at­ed sub­stan­tial prof­its and rev­enue for them, the na­tion­al trea­sury, and the share­hold­ers. This is the Trinidad and To­ba­go we cur­rent­ly find our­selves in.”

He said the union had ex­haust­ed all le­gal chan­nels and ex­pressed con­cern that court judg­ments were not be­ing tak­en se­ri­ous­ly.

“These work­ers are pre­pared to con­tin­ue to bat­tle on and to strug­gle for what is theirs but I want to say to Trinidad and To­ba­go that they are not on­ly bat­tling for their fam­i­lies, they are ac­tu­al­ly bat­tling for the soul of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” War­wick said.