KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

De­clar­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go is on the verge of an “en­er­gy and eco­nom­ic boom,” the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) signed a train­ing agree­ment with man­age­ment con­sult­ing firm Col­lec­tive En­er­gies Ltd (CENER­GY) yes­ter­day to pre­pare work­ers for the pro­posed restart of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery and wider ex­pan­sion in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The agree­ment was signed by OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get and CENER­GY ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Dr Joseph Khan at the Para­mount Build­ing, San Fer­nan­do.

Un­der the arrange­ment, OW­TU mem­bers will not on­ly re­ceive train­ing for the chang­ing de­mands of the en­er­gy sec­tor, but ex­pe­ri­enced work­ers will al­so help de­vel­op train­ing mod­ules and de­liv­ery meth­ods tai­lored to the in­dus­try’s needs.

De­scrib­ing San Fer­nan­do as the coun­try’s in­dus­tri­al cap­i­tal, Ro­get said T&T was en­ter­ing a new phase of en­er­gy de­vel­op­ment and the union in­tend­ed to en­sure lo­cal work­ers were equipped to ben­e­fit from it.

“This coun­try is on the brink of an en­er­gy and eco­nom­ic boom where all the cit­i­zens of this coun­try will ben­e­fit,” Ro­get said.

“To be able to max­imise our par­tic­i­pa­tion and there­fore the ben­e­fit of the coun­try, it takes hu­man cap­i­tal, hu­man be­ings to work.”

Ro­get said the agree­ment sig­nalled the union’s con­fi­dence in Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to re­vive the econ­o­my and at­tract in­vest­ment in­to the en­er­gy sec­tor af­ter what he de­scribed as a decade of stag­na­tion.

“With all of the dif­fer­ent multi­na­tion­als show­ing in­ter­est, bright days are not too far ahead. Bright days are here right now,” Ro­get said, adding that the union was po­si­tion­ing it­self to cap­i­talise on re­newed ac­tiv­i­ty in the sec­tor.

While the OW­TU al­ready has an ex­pe­ri­enced work­force, Ro­get said the union want­ed work­ers trained at the high­est tech­no­log­i­cal lev­el to pre­vent lo­cals from be­ing side­lined in their own in­dus­try.

“We want to change that. Flip that on its head, where every­body will be prop­er­ly well trained on the cut­ting edge and be ready to de­liv­er and not have the un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion of ex­pa­tri­ates com­ing and tak­ing all of the prime jobs in those sec­tors.”

He said the agree­ment formed part of the union’s broad­er prepa­ra­tions for the re­fur­bish­ment and restart of the re­fin­ery.

Ro­get point­ed to the OW­TU’s re­cent agree­ment with Ital­ian firm Tech­n­i­mont, say­ing the com­pa­ny had recog­nised the ca­pa­bil­i­ty and ex­pe­ri­ence of lo­cal work­ers to un­der­take re­fin­ery-re­lat­ed work un­der its co­op­er­a­tion and di­rec­tion.

“That was, and this is part of the OW­TU prepar­ing it­self for un­der­tak­ing the work of the re­fur­bish­ment and restart of the re­fin­ery.

“But even out­side of the re­fin­ery and Her­itage, as those multi­na­tion­als come to our shores, we want to be able to tell them, ‘We are ready.’”

Asked about the sta­tus of the re­fin­ery restart, Ro­get said the pub­lic would have to await fur­ther an­nounce­ments from the Gov­ern­ment re­gard­ing on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with ma­jor oil com­pa­nies. How­ev­er, he said there had been a no­tice­able shift in in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est in T&T’s en­er­gy sec­tor since the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“There seems to be a re­newed in­ter­est in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­sources, and if one is pay­ing close at­ten­tion, they would recog­nise that in­ter­est was not there.”

Khan de­scribed the agree­ment as the cul­mi­na­tion of months of dis­cus­sions be­tween the two or­gan­i­sa­tions on the im­por­tance of hu­man cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment in the evolv­ing en­er­gy land­scape.

“We both agreed that Trinidad and To­ba­go is at the cusp of some­thing great and we want to sup­port the men and women who will be on that front­line as it re­lates to the work­force,” Khan said.

He said CENER­GY, which spe­cialis­es in man­age­ment con­sult­ing, train­ing, de­vel­op­ment and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, want­ed to en­sure work­ers were pre­pared for changes across the en­er­gy in­dus­try, in­clud­ing health and safe­ty, qual­i­ty man­age­ment, re­new­able en­er­gy and emerg­ing tech­ni­cal fields.

Khan said a joint com­mit­tee would be es­tab­lished to as­sess the needs of OW­TU mem­bers, cus­tomise train­ing pro­grammes, and de­vel­op cur­ric­u­la, tools, and de­liv­ery meth­ods, draw­ing on the ex­per­tise of ex­pe­ri­enced union mem­bers.

He said some in­ter­ven­tions were ex­pect­ed to be­gin be­fore the end of the year and would even­tu­al­ly ex­tend be­yond re­fin­ery op­er­a­tions in­to sec­tors such as elec­tric­i­ty, fu­el dis­tri­b­u­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing and ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion.

Khan al­so re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the en­er­gy sec­tor was in de­cline, say­ing glob­al en­er­gy de­mand con­tin­ued to evolve de­spite the tran­si­tion to­wards re­new­able sources.

“En­er­gy is here to stay, whether it is oil and gas, whether it is re­new­ables,” Khan said.

“We have the petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try, LNG and light man­u­fac­tur­ing. Trinidad and To­ba­go re­quires en­er­gy.”