KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er

@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NP) is shut­ting down al­le­ga­tions against the com­pa­ny by both the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (PDA).

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, NP sought to re­fute mul­ti­ple claims sur­round­ing the sud­den ex­it of the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO), fu­el dis­tri­b­u­tion to ser­vice sta­tions, as well as its au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments.

Last Fri­day, NP’s for­mer CEO Derek Luk Pat re­signed af­ter on­ly one year. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands he re­signed due to per­son­al rea­sons. He has now been re­placed by NP’s gen­er­al man­ag­er of Avi­a­tion and Ma­rine Fu­els Chester Beep­ut as in­ter­im CEO.

How­ev­er, PDA pres­i­dent Robin Narayns­ingh claimed he may have been forced to leave due to the lev­el of cor­rup­tion ex­ist­ing with­in the com­pa­ny. But NP fired back yes­ter­day, say­ing those al­le­ga­tions are “com­plete­ly un­found­ed and with­out any fac­tu­al ba­sis.”

The PDA al­so ac­cused NP of hav­ing a “cul­ture of wastage” and said it did not care if com­mu­ni­ties re­ceived fu­el. NP de­nied this as well.

“NP wish­es to state that these com­ments are un­found­ed and ve­he­ment­ly de­nies the state­ments al­leged­ly made by Mr Robin Narayns­ingh, pres­i­dent of the PDA. NP wish­es to recog­nise the dili­gence and ded­i­ca­tion of its em­ploy­ees who en­sure on a dai­ly ba­sis that ser­vice sta­tions re­ceive fu­el when need­ed to pro­vide fu­el to the rel­e­vant catch­ment ar­eas and com­mu­ni­ties where each re­spec­tive sta­tion is lo­cat­ed.

“There is a ro­bust frame­work that guides pru­dence and ef­fi­cien­cy in NP’s op­er­a­tions, which is ex­e­cut­ed by the board, man­age­ment, and staff in the per­for­mance of their re­spec­tive roles.”

NP al­so re­spond­ed to com­plaints about its fi­nan­cials not be­ing pub­lished.

“The au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed March 2022 have been com­plet­ed and are in the process of be­ing pre­sent­ed to the share­hold­er for ap­proval at its up­com­ing AGM. The au­dit for the year end­ed 2023 March is cur­rent­ly in progress.”

Mean­while, NP work­ers have once again de­cid­ed to take their frus­tra­tions out­side of the com­pa­ny. The union, OW­TU, said work­ers are ex­pect­ed to protest in front of NP’s head­quar­ters at Sea Lots Com­plex from noon to­day. Their griev­ances are with NP chair­man Sahid Ho­sein, the spur-of-the-mo­ment res­ig­na­tion of Luk Pat, and al­le­ga­tions made by the PDA.