Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has been giv­en an ul­ti­ma­tum to ei­ther ad­dress is­sues af­fect­ing work­ers, in­clud­ing a swift res­o­lu­tion to the Paria dri­vers and Ni­Quan in­ci­dents, or face a union-led so­cial and po­lit­i­cal cam­paign against them.

It came from Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) branch pres­i­dent Christo­pher Jack­man yes­ter­day dur­ing a demon­stra­tion at the front gates of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, where the Ni­Quan plant is lo­cat­ed.

A fire at the Ni­Quan plant on June 15 re­sult­ed in the death of Massy En­er­gy En­gi­neered So­lu­tions Ltd work­er Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon.

Jack­man re­it­er­at­ed that the union does not rep­re­sent Ni­Quan work­ers, but he said the union had raised ques­tions when the ac­ci­dent oc­curred, but they had been ig­nored. He again ques­tioned why there was no alarm when the fire oc­curred, and when the am­bu­lance re­spond­ed more than two hours lat­er, the siren was not on.

Call­ing for an­swers to those ques­tions, he al­so lament­ed that Ramkissoon’s fam­i­ly and the rel­a­tives of the Paria divers had to threat­en le­gal ac­tion against the com­pa­nies to get jus­tice.

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to put a pol­i­cy in place to en­sure swift jus­tice for the fam­i­lies of work­ers who die on the job­site.

“This has hap­pened too many times, and what I am im­plor­ing of this Gov­ern­ment is to put some pol­i­cy in place for the in­ter­est of the loved ones of peo­ple that die on these job­sites to be closed up and wrapped up in a short space of time. It can­not be that while a fam­i­ly mem­ber is out there mourn­ing the loss of their loved ones that they now have to now come out and fight, ad­di­tion­al­ly, while go­ing through their morn­ing phase to get some sort of jus­tice and some sort of com­pen­sa­tion.”

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly re­solve the mat­ters in the Paria tragedy and Ni­Quan and pre­vent “this sort of crazy be­hav­iour” from hap­pen­ing again.

“We will be do­ing it po­lit­i­cal­ly, we will be do­ing it hit­ting the streets, and we will be do­ing it via so­cial me­dia. And if they don’t ad­dress this prob­lem, then we will do what we have to do to en­sure that Row­ley is re­moved from the Gov­ern­ment,” he said.