Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Massy En­er­gy En­gi­neered So­lu­tions Ltd. (MEES) says it is work­ing with the Colom­bian au­thor­i­ties and fam­i­ly mem­bers of for­mer em­ploy­ee Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon to repa­tri­ate his body.

Ramkissoon died in Colom­bia on June 18th, three days af­ter sus­tain­ing burns in an ac­ci­dent at Ni­Quan En­er­gy Trinidad Ltd’s plant in Pointe-a-Pierre.

Fol­low­ing med­ical ad­vice, Ramkissoon was air­lift­ed to the South Amer­i­can coun­try or emer­gency med­ical treat­ment at an ac­cred­it­ed spe­cial­ist fa­cil­i­ty be­fore he suc­cumbed to his in­juries.

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, MEES al­so said it is ac­tive­ly en­gaged in Ni­Quan’s in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, OS­HA’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and oth­er in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the death of Ramkissoon.

MEES said it is com­mit­ted to get­ting a de­tailed un­der­stand­ing of the main caus­es of the ac­ci­dent and where ap­pro­pri­ate, em­bed with­in its busi­ness any lessons or im­prove­ments that may come out of the process.

The com­pa­ny said the Ramkissoon’s col­leagues are al­so re­ceiv­ing care and as­sis­tance to nav­i­gate what it called a ‘dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od.’

Massy En­er­gy En­gi­neered So­lu­tions Ltd was con­tract­ed by Ni­Quan En­er­gy to pro­vide per­son­nel un­der a Mas­ter Ser­vice Agree­ment for the pro­vi­sion of man­pow­er re­sources. MEES of­fers ser­vices for a range of en­er­gy-based in­dus­tries.

The com­pa­ny once again of­fered con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of Ramkissoon, promis­ing to stand with them.

Mean­while, Trinida­di­an-born, US-based oc­cu­pa­tion­al safe­ty ex­pert, Carl­stein Lutch­me­di­al, says the find­ings of any in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the Ni­Quan plant ac­ci­dent which re­sult­ed in the death of Ramkissoon must be made avail­able to the pub­lic.

Ac­cord­ing to Lutch­me­di­al, di­rec­tor of the New York City De­part­ment of En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and a cer­ti­fied safe­ty train­er/con­sul­tant who spe­cial­izes in the oil and gas sec­tor, the fa­cil­i­ty can di­rect­ly af­fect the health, safe­ty and en­vi­ron­ment of not on­ly the work­ers but the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

“Any in­ves­ti­ga­tion must be made avail­able to the pub­lic at large, since they can be di­rect­ly and or in­di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by the ac­tions and in­ac­tions of the com­pa­ny. At the same time, re­gard­less of an in­ci­dent oc­cur­ring, the com­mu­ni­ty has a “right to know” what’s tak­ing place in their back­yard. Most de­vel­oped coun­tries have “Right to Know” laws for both work­ers and the com­mu­ni­ty,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

He said there were many ques­tions to be an­swered, in­clud­ing if there an emer­gency re­sponse plan in place; if the pipes be­ing worked on were locked and tagged out to pre­vent any in­ad­ver­tent re­lease of gas­es and whether the plant was as­sessed in­de­pen­dent­ly to en­sure that it was tech­ni­cal­ly sound to op­er­ate safe­ly.

“Did Ni­Quan have a con­trac­tor man­age­ment pro­gramme in place?” Lutch­me­di­al asked.

The US army vet­er­an, who led NYC’s re­me­di­a­tion project for the 9-11 World Trade Cen­ter dis­as­ter, said be­cause the Ni­Quan is used it needs to be thought of as buy­ing a used car. He said al­though the best en­gi­neers may have done an as­sess­ment and giv­en clear­ance to pur­chase, there are still a lot of un­knowns that soon be­come ap­par­ent af­ter a han­dover.

Not­ing that Ni­Quan had an ex­plo­sion im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter be­ing com­mis­sioned dur­ing a start-up op­er­a­tion, he said,

“The cur­rent in­ci­dent at Ni­Quan has come to the fore­front again be­cause of its in­abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly man­age the safe­ty of its em­ploy­ees, stake­hold­ers and the com­mu­ni­ty. Af­ter the ex­plo­sion in­ci­dent which was in­ves­ti­gat­ed, how­ev­er, the find­ings were not re­leased to the pub­lic, leav­ing one ques­tion­ing whether Ni­Quan bought a ‘lemon’, as is said in the used car in­dus­try,” he said.

“The sig­nif­i­cant ex­plo­sion in 2021 ... and the re­cent fa­tal­i­ty due to a “flash” fire must call to at­ten­tion the need for a thor­ough as­set in­tegri­ty analy­sis of the plant, since it’s a used plant. Small in­ci­dents oc­cur­ring at a plant are a cry for help. A small in­ci­dent is a warn­ing to its op­er­a­tors that every­thing is not right and a ma­jor in­ci­dent is very like­ly to hap­pen.”

He said the key here is to com­plete the probe in a time­ly fash­ion.

“Such in­ci­dents must be in­ves­ti­gat­ed as quick­ly as pos­si­ble af­ter the in­ci­dent oc­curs or is re­port­ed be­fore the scene of the in­ci­dent is dis­turbed or changed, be­fore vic­tim(s) and wit­ness­es for­get what hap­pened, the ev­i­dence goes miss­ing and sto­ries change,” he said.

“At the end of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the OSH Agency or the Min­istry of En­er­gy must post its find­ings on its web­site, as oth­er coun­tries do, so that all can be made aware of the in­ves­tiga­tive find­ings (per­son­al or sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion and trade se­crets can be redact­ed),” he said.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (OS­HA) have launched in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dent that led to Ramkissoon’s death. Ramkissoon’s rel­a­tives have al­so pub­licly de­mand­ed more in­for­ma­tion about the in­ci­dent from Ni­Quan.