DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) is call­ing for ur­gent ac­tion to pre­vent a fi­nan­cial cri­sis for 7,000 Petrotrin re­tirees due to the Gov­ern­ment’s al­leged fail­ure to in­ject funds in­to the Petrotrin Em­ploy­ees Pen­sion Plan (PEPP).

Pointe-a-Pierre branch pres­i­dent Christo­pher Jack­man yes­ter­day said re­tirees are con­cerned that the PEPP is los­ing $400 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, even as they con­tin­ue to re­ceive their dis­burse­ments, which they are en­ti­tled to, un­til they die.

He warned that if this trend con­tin­ues, in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ments in eq­ui­ties could be de­plet­ed by next year, while lo­cal eq­ui­ties might be ex­haust­ed by 2036. For the fund to sur­vive, it needs a sub­stan­tial an­nu­al in­vest­ment of be­tween US$100 mil­lion and US$250 mil­lion to ad­dress the grow­ing deficit, he said.

“We can­not treat this as an is­sue that we can just ig­nore and wind up the plan be­cause not on­ly will it af­fect Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my when the lo­cal eq­ui­ties are dis­solved, this will now put 8,100 fam­i­lies in a po­si­tion of be­com­ing des­ti­tute,” Jack­man said.

He was speak­ing out­side the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go (CBTT), af­ter lead­ing a group of re­tirees in a two-part mis­sion to ad­vo­cate for the pen­sion plan. The group first gath­ered out­side Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed’s Park Street branch to de­liv­er a let­ter to the trustee of the PEPP, call­ing for the es­tab­lish­ment of a man­age­ment com­mit­tee. They then pro­ceed­ed to the CBTT to de­liv­er a let­ter de­mand­ing an up­date on the fund from the su­per­vi­sor of pen­sions.

Be­fore Petrotrin’s clo­sure in No­vem­ber 2018, em­ploy­ees re­tired be­tween ages 50 and 55 and ex­pect­ed to re­ceive their pen­sion. In Ju­ly 2021, OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get re­port­ed a $1.6 bil­lion deficit in the PEPP and said ac­tu­ary Ba­con Woodrow and De Souza Ltd had ad­vised then-Petrotrin chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet that an ini­tial in­jec­tion of $250 mil­lion was nec­es­sary, fol­lowed by an­nu­al pay­ments of $135 mil­lion for the next decade.

To date, the union claimed no funds have been in­ject­ed in­to the pen­sion plan.

“We have been talk­ing and try­ing to ne­go­ti­ate for the last six years and we have had enough. Now is the time for our voic­es to be heard. Now is time to en­sure that if it is they don’t re­solve this, they will face the penal­ties of this in the polls,” Jack­man de­clared.

Petrotrin work­ers were al­so guar­an­teed life-long health­care for them­selves and their de­pen­dents but when the re­fin­ery closed, they were giv­en the op­tion to vol­un­tar­i­ly join an in­sur­ance plan at Sagi­cor which the Gov­ern­ment con­tributed to for two years.

Once that sub­ven­tion was dis­con­tin­ued, mem­bers were re­quired to cov­er their bills in full.

All­ston Fran­cois, 73, who re­tired in 2011 af­ter work­ing at Petrotrin for 39 years, said his wife suf­fered the con­se­quences of him giv­ing up his in­sur­ance.

“One month af­ter I dropped out the plan, she gets sick, se­ri­ous sick... Se­ri­ous sick and died in the hos­pi­tal,” he lament­ed.

Dhan­raj Goolcha­ran, 76, who re­tired in 2008 af­ter 41 years with the com­pa­ny, said: “My pen­sion is my on­ly source of in­come and if I lose that then I will be fac­ing stark pover­ty.”

Jack­man sug­gest­ed that Gov­ern­ment should con­tribute to the plan through Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, one of the two com­pa­nies that suc­ceed­ed Petrotrin. He called on En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to en­sure this oc­curs.

“Let Her­itage cov­er the debt. They (Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Lim­it­ed) are legal­ly en­ti­tled to cov­er the debt in the plan ac­cord­ing to the trust deed and rules. Live up to your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and stop us hav­ing to fight all these mat­ters in court,” he said.

Ef­forts to reach Min­is­ter Young, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um for com­ments were un­suc­cess­ful.