RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency has start­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the death of WASA work­er Kern Eti­enne, who died af­ter be­ing buried alive in a trench he was work­ing in along the Rien­zi Kir­ton High­way, San Fer­nan­do, on Sun­day.

OS­HA ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Car­olyn San­cho told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the au­thor­i­ty is cur­rent­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent. She re­vealed that in­spec­tors had al­ready been as­signed to the case.

Mean­while, WASA CEO Kelvin Ro­main told Guardian Me­dia that an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, sep­a­rate from the OS­HA probe, had been start­ed as well.

Asked why prop­er shoring of the trench was not done, Ro­main said he pre­ferred to re­frain from com­ment­ing un­til the thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­plet­ed.

“This in­ci­dent is trag­ic and we lost one of our val­ued em­ploy­ees,” Ro­main lament­ed.

He re­vealed that he per­son­al­ly vis­it­ed the Eti­enne fam­i­ly to of­fer his deep­est con­do­lences. Ro­main said WASA’s Hu­man Re­sources De­part­ment has al­so start­ed coun­selling for the em­ploy­ees who were at the site.

“An in­ves­ti­ga­tion was launched, OS­HA was con­tact­ed and I will com­ment fur­ther once our com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plet­ed,” he ex­plained.

Mean­while, Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste al­so ex­pressed sad­ness over Eti­enne’s death.

“As you ex­pect, every or­gan­i­sa­tion has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that work is done safe­ly. Some­thing ob­vi­ous­ly went wrong and we will be look­ing in­to the mat­ter to en­sure that all safe­ty pre­cau­tions would have been tak­en and if not, we will need to know what went wrong,” he said.

Bap­tiste said the PSA has al­ways sought joint health and safe­ty meet­ings with the au­thor­i­ty.

“I will be look­ing for­ward to get­ting a re­port on this in­ci­dent,” he said.

How­ev­er, he said any project of the na­ture the crew was work­ing should have shoring in the trench.

“This re­pair­ing of sew­er or wa­ter mains is a core func­tion of WASA. They are sup­posed to have clear pro­ce­dures on how to treat with this. If they dig a trench, they are sup­posed to have shoring so that if some­one en­ters the trench it is safe to do so. That is stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures,” Bap­tiste said.

Eti­enne’s twin broth­er Kerdelle Eti­enne al­so ques­tioned why the trench was cov­ered over af­ter his broth­er was rushed to the hos­pi­tal.

He said af­ter the dirt start­ed cav­ing on top of Eti­enne, eight co-work­ers fran­ti­cal­ly clawed through the dirt to get him out. The back­hoe was al­so used but by the time he was brought back up, he ap­peared to be dead.

An au­top­sy is sched­uled to be done on his body this week.

Eti­enne was part of a WASA team that was do­ing emer­gency re­pairs to a sew­er line which con­nects the San Fer­nan­do Li­cens­ing of­fice to the WASA sew­er main on Cipero Road. While stand­ing in a 12-foot trench, the dirt caved, bury­ing Eti­enne.