Gail Alexan­der

The Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty's (OS­HA) re­port in­to the re­cent tragedy at Paria Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed must be made pub­lic and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um must ex­plain how a 2,000-pound oil rig fell down last week.

UNC MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal made this call at last night's UNC fo­rum meet­ing. He said af­ter the in­ci­dent at Paria oc­curred Feb­ru­ary 24, OS­HA made a state­ment on March 11 about it.

"This is un­ten­able. We al­so de­mand to know the names of the OS­HA of­fi­cials who are con­duct­ing this in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Did OS­HA seek to re­cruit any lo­cal or in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts to as­sist with this in­ves­ti­ga­tion? If not, why not?"

Mooni­lal added, "In­for­ma­tion com­ing to us sug­gest an­oth­er di­a­bol­i­cal ac­ci­dent in the oil sec­tor oc­curred. This one they're at­tempt­ing to cov­er up...We are told that just a few days ago, last Fri­day, at For­est Re­serve in south Trinidad on the com­pound of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed an en­tire rig fall down!! Again a con­trac­tor is in­volved un­der the su­per­vi­sion of a state com­pa­ny."

Dis­play­ing pic­tures, Mooni­lal added, "A Coop­er 250 Workover Rig just fall down. This weighs around 2,000 pounds, it fell down from a height of over 60 feet. Had there been work­ers on a plat­form there, usu­al­ly there are 4-5 work­ers, they'd all be dead. We call on Her­itage's CEO Ar­lene Chow, to state whether this in­ci­dent took place?"

Mooni­lal al­so took aim at Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's boast that he was the 'high pub­lic of­fi­cial' who in­ter­vened in­flu­enc­ing for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion chair­man Bliss Seep­er­sad to with­draw the mer­it list for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er from the Pres­i­dent "and in so do­ing vi­o­late the con­sti­tu­tion."

Mooni­lal added, "Row­ley and Bliss Seep­er­sad should be in­ves­ti­gat­ed for al­leged mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice and the Pres­i­dent, hav­ing knowl­edge of this in­ter­fer­ence and do­ing noth­ing – should re­sign."

"Worse, is that Seep­er­sad act­ed on ad­vice or in­struc­tions from Row­ley, with­out the agree­ment of the rest of the PolSC mem­bers. She be­came a one-woman agent of the PNM do­ing Row­ley’s bid­ding."

"Row­ley took mat­ters in­to his own hands and com­mit­ted the ul­ti­mate act of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice – in­ter­fer­ing di­rect­ly in a process so im­por­tant that it is de­tailed in the high­est law of the land. His be­hav­iour is il­le­gal and un­ac­cept­able, as is the ac­qui­esce of the Pres­i­dent."

He said Row­ley couldn't say he passed on re­ports to the PolSC and that was his du­ty.

"If you have in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to al­le­ga­tions of crim­i­nal con­duct you pass that on to the po­lice not the PolSC. The PoLSC is not the po­lice...He un­der­mined the work of an in­de­pen­dent con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­i­ty and in so do­ing can be ac­cused of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice."