Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get is call­ing for the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) re­port in­to the Paria tragedy that claimed the lives of four divers to be made pub­lic and not sani­tised.

He made the call for full dis­clo­sure hours af­ter CoE chair­man Jerome Lynch, KC, sub­mit­ted the re­port to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo yes­ter­day.

While ad­dress­ing for­mer Petrotrin work­ers and union mem­bers at the Pointe-a-Pierre round­about to mark the fifth an­niver­sary of Petrotrin’s clo­sure last evening, Ro­get said, “I want you to join me in call­ing for that re­port to be made pub­lic. You see, there is this thing that they call redact­ed and sani­tised and what they will put out and what they have their me­dia friends as­sist them in putting out ...”

At a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Lynch said the 380-page re­port was com­plet­ed, but he did not di­vulge any de­tails about the find­ings, ex­cept to say that the 2022 tragedy was “no act of God”. Lynch added that every­one should en­sure that the tragedy nev­er re­curs.

The re­port was de­liv­ered 21 months af­ter LM­CS divers Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Yusuf Hen­ry and Rishi Na­gas­sar died in­side a Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny pipeline at Berth No 6 in the Pointe-a-Pierre har­bour. Fel­low div­er Christo­pher Boodram who was al­so sucked in­to the pipeline sur­vived.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view af­ter ad­dress­ing the work­ers and union mem­bers in Pointe-a-Pierre, Ro­get called for crim­i­nal charges against those found cul­pa­ble in the re­port. He said they should be charged for neg­li­gence that re­sult­ed in the deaths of the divers.

Con­demn­ing the treat­ment of the fam­i­lies since the divers’ deaths, Ro­get said it was “un­fath­omable to think” that the fam­i­lies of the divers would not re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion. He said the divers left home to go to work to earn an in­come to main­tain their fam­i­lies.

Ro­get al­so main­tained that had Petrotrin still been func­tion­al the divers would not have died due to the high lev­el of health and safe­ty stan­dards prac­ticed by the com­pa­ny.

Mean­while, Kevin Lalchan, a for­mer Petrotrin em­ploy­ee who has been ad­vo­cat­ing for jus­tice for the dri­vers said the Gov­ern­ment nev­er reached out to the fam­i­lies. He said they have to give the Pres­i­dent time to re­view the re­port, but he called on the coun­try to “not sleep on this mat­ter” and keep push­ing for jus­tice.

Com­pa­ny made US$2 bil­lion loss–Ro­get

Claim­ing that the coun­try and peo­ple are worse off with­out Petrotrin, Ro­get claimed that Paria has lost US$2 bil­lion be­tween 2019 to 2023.

Ro­get pro­vid­ed a doc­u­ment on Paria ob­tained by the union un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act with the break­down show­ing the val­ue of re­fined prod­ucts im­port­ed by the com­pa­ny be­tween De­cem­ber 2018 to Sep­tem­ber 2023.

While the Gov­ern­ment has been try­ing to jus­ti­fy their de­ci­sion to close down Petrotrin by claim­ing it was los­ing mon­ey, he said, “For the pe­ri­od 2019 to 2023–Oc­to­ber 2019 to 30th Sep­tem­ber 2023–Paria would have lost some US$2,698,304,867. In­stead of mak­ing Forex, Paria los­ing be­cause of the price of what they im­port and they have to pay what­ev­er the prices are on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket ...” In ad­di­tion, he said peo­ple were be­ing sold poor-qual­i­ty fu­el on the lo­cal mar­ket.

He said since Petrotrin’s clo­sure the coun­try has been grap­pling with scarce for­eign ex­change, un­em­ploy­ment, fu­el in­creas­es, and de­plorable roads be­cause there is no bi­tu­men.

Ro­get called the work­ers and the pub­lic to stand to­geth­er against the Row­ley-led Gov­ern­ment and the Peo­ples Na­tion­al Move­ment for what he saw as in­jus­tices against the pop­u­la­tion. He al­so ac­cused the me­dia of be­ing bi­ased in its re­port­ing of the Petrotrin is­sue.

Au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials do not sup­port views on loss­es

How­ev­er, the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials of Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny since its in­cep­tion on De­cem­ber 1, 2018, do not ap­pear to sup­port the con­tention of the pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the OW­TU that the fu­el im­porter lost US$2.69 bil­lion:

For the ten months from De­cem­ber 1, 2018 to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2019, Paria de­clared af­ter-tax prof­it of $109.29 mil­lion;

For the 12 months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2020, the com­pa­ny re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $231.16 mil­lion;

For the 12 months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2021, the fu­el im­porter’s af­ter-tax prof­it amount­ed to $162.02 mil­lion;

For the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022, Paria de­clared $257.35 mil­lion in af­ter-tax prof­its.

There­fore, for the three years and ten months be­tween De­cem­ber 1, 2018 and Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022, Paria de­clared au­dit­ed af­ter-tax prof­its of $759.82 mil­lion.