Work­ers, in­clud­ing the se­cu­ri­ty staff, em­ployed the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) have been ad­vised to take what­ev­er means nec­es­sary with­in the law to pro­tect them­selves from be­ing ex­posed to COVID-19 in the work­place.

The call came from Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union's ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent Pe­ter Burke who again ac­cused T&TEC of dis­play­ing a cal­lous and "doh care" at­ti­tude to­wards pro­tect­ing work­ers and mit­i­gat­ing the spread of the virus.

Burke said at least sev­en work­ers–three em­ployed in the South, three in the North and one in Ari­ma– have test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus, while some 50 work­ers in to­tal have had to be self-quar­an­tined, 20 of whom are still in quar­an­tine. On Thurs­day, work­ers from the T&TEC Port-of-Spain branch re­fused to work un­til they got an­swers from man­age­ment af­ter learn­ing that sev­en se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers were sent on self-quar­an­tine af­ter ex­hibit­ing flu-like sys­tem.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the OW­TU head­quar­ters in San Fer­nan­do on Sat­ur­day, Burke ac­cused man­age­ment of reneg­ing on an agree­ment with the union to im­ple­ment a two-week ro­ta­tion work shift, which co­in­cides with the iso­la­tion COVID-19 pol­i­cy, to re­duce the in­fec­tion rate. "What we are hav­ing is the one day in, one day out which re­al­ly does not help any­body." He claimed the com­mis­sion has not been forth­right with the work­force or the unions about the rate of in­fec­tions and its self-iso­la­tion pro­ce­dure. "We have found that the com­mis­sion is try­ing to hide the in­for­ma­tion, sup­press the in­for­ma­tion."

Burke claimed the com­mis­sion has been al­low­ing work­ers who were ex­posed to the virus to con­tin­ue work­ing. "And that is high­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble," he said, adding that the com­mis­sion has been hid­ing be­hind gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions. He al­so com­plained that sani­ti­sa­tion was not be­ing done ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly and said there was a short­age of masks and gloves.

He ad­vised work­ers, "You a right to self-pro­tec­tion and self-preser­va­tion. Notwith­stand­ing the fact that the man­age­ment does not al­ways prac­tice the du­ty of care which they are legal­ly, moral­ly and eth­i­cal­ly ob­lig­at­ed, you have that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect your­selves and you must do so with­in all the means of the law, the col­lec­tive agree­ment and your own per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty."

Not­ing that the coun­try was in full-blown com­mu­ni­ty spread, he warned that if the com­mis­sion fails to get its act to­geth­er, it could lead to in­creased spread with­in and out­side the work­place.

He ap­pealed to the man­age­ment a of T&TEC to act re­spon­si­bly. He al­so ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment and Min­istry of Health not to "co­op­er­ate with mis­guid­ed man­agers in the state and pri­vate sec­tor" to put work­ers at risk.

T&TEC re­sponds

Guardian con­tact­ed T&TEC's cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Annabelle Bransnell for a re­sponse to the union's claims and con­fir­ma­tion on the num­ber of em­ploy­ees who test­ed pos­i­tive or were in self-iso­la­tion. How­ev­er, she re­ferred us to the com­pa­ny's state­ment that was is­sued on Thurs­day in re­sponse to the union's claims that the com­pa­ny was not do­ing enough to pro­tect work­ers from be­com­ing in­fect­ed with the virus. Fur­ther at­tempts to con­tact Bras­nell on her cell­phone were un­suc­cess­ful. Last Thurs­day T&TEC sent out a state­ment deny­ing that it was putting work­ers at risk of con­tract­ing the virus. The Com­mis­sion stat­ed that all COVID-19 pro­to­cols were in place, in­clud­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of masks and oth­er PPE and all Min­istry of Health guide­lines were be­ing fol­lowed. Once there is a COVID 19 sit­u­a­tion, the Com­mis­sion said the min­istry is in­formed.