Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Peren­co Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed off­shore work­ers are plead­ing with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties for help, as they fear a mass COVID-19 con­t­a­m­i­na­tion on the two ma­jor plat­forms they work on and with­in their fam­i­lies. This is be­cause some of them claim pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive work­ers are still in­ter­min­gling on the plat­form, while some of them were al­lowed to re­turn to their homes be­fore get­ting tests to con­firm whether they had the virus or not.

The ap­peal came even as the com­pa­ny moved a batch of 18 work­ers from one of the rigs to the Tradewinds Ho­tel in San Fer­nan­do last night. Those work­ers, who have not so far test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus, were tak­en to the Ga­le­o­ta Port then shut­tled to San Fer­nan­do around 7.51 pm. On Sun­day, some 35 work­ers were evac­u­at­ed from the Teak Al­pha plat­form and tak­en in­to state quar­an­tine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Debe cam­pus af­ter they test­ed pos­i­tive.

Work­ers yes­ter­day dis­re­gard­ed the com­pa­ny’s warn­ing not to speak to the me­dia to keep Guardian Me­dia up­dat­ed on the sit­u­a­tion. They claimed prop­er pro­to­cols were not be­ing fol­lowed by the com­pa­ny and in­sist­ed pos­i­tive cas­es were still on the du­ty to en­sur­er the op­er­a­tions were kept run­ning.

“Two mem­bers of the cater­ing com­pa­ny were sent to per­form san­i­ta­tion du­ties from one field to the in­flict­ed field. We have learnt that they too were in­fect­ed by COVID-19. The men that came did not have the ap­pro­pri­ate pro­tec­tive equip­ment to per­form the as­signed task. Per­sons that left Teak Al­pha pri­or to the pub­lic­i­ty are now find­ing them­selves pos­i­tive; these in­di­vid­u­als would have al­ready come in­to con­tact with nu­mer­ous per­sons,” one work­er, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said.

Perenco Trinidad and Tobago Limited workers wait on a shuttle boat on Sunday, after testing positive for COVID-19.

“The so­cial dis­tanc­ing for some part is not be­ing ad­hered to, as peo­ple are forced to sleep in cramped four-per­son rooms. I was in­formed that an­oth­er batch of COVID neg­a­tive em­ploy­ees are be­ing tak­en off the Teak A fa­cil­i­ty to­day (yes­ter­day), these are to be quar­an­tined for 14 days.

“The fa­cil­i­ties are be­ing run by less than ad­e­quate COVID-19-pos­i­tive per­sons who are un­der duress. It was stat­ed that they will not be paid if they don’t work. The in­tim­i­dat­ing tac­tics con­tin­ue to be the norm by the French na­tion­als and lo­cals in key po­si­tions.”

The work­ers claim the out­break start­ed on the Teak Al­pha fa­cil­i­ty when a French na­tion­al ex­hib­it­ed signs of be­ing ill two weeks ago. Work­ers claimed that when French na­tion­als come in­to the coun­try to join work crews, there is no prop­er iso­la­tion pro­to­col as stip­u­lat­ed un­der the Gov­ern­ment’s COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions.

“This prac­tice was ob­served to be the norm by both staff and con­tract em­ploy­ees. This can give rise to a spread to what we cur­rent­ly have,” an­oth­er work­er, who wished to re­main anony­mous, said al­though in­sist­ing “the truth will set them free.”

The work­ers claim 13 pos­i­tive work­ers and 18 neg­a­tive work­ers are now be­ing asked to man the Teak Al­pha lo­ca­tion un­til they can bring in fresh work­ers.

“Peren­co does not want to shut down and have a prop­er sani­tis­ing crew placed on board. We in­ter­face with ma­chin­ery and plant on a reg­u­lar ba­sis. They have pos­i­tive op­er­a­tors still on shift hand­ing over to neg­a­tive op­er­a­tors on the night shift. This is be­ing done with­out prop­er sani­ti­sa­tion of com­put­ers and desks. Since the PCR tests were done for all per­sons, the neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive per­sons were sleep­ing in rooms to­geth­er,” one work­er claimed.

An­oth­er work­er claimed that on the Teak Delta plat­form there are four peo­ple, one of whom test­ed pos­i­tive. The work­ers are wor­ried that the pos­i­tive per­son is in­ter­min­gling with the neg­a­tive in­di­vid­u­als.

One of the live-in quarters on the Teak Alpha platform.

“They (com­pa­ny) have not sent home the pos­i­tive per­son, as he is the Away Team Leader. They (Peren­co) val­ue pro­duc­tion over hu­man lives. The neg­a­tive per­sons can con­tract COVID through the use of the gal­ley on Teak Delta, as there is one con­trol room.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the first lo­cal work­er start­ed com­plain­ing of flu-like symp­toms on De­cem­ber 7. A work­er who knows that vic­tim said al­though the pol­i­cy states his col­league should have been sent home he was not. Three days lat­er, the work­er was fi­nal­ly sent home af­ter his symp­toms wors­ened to a high fever with body pains.

“On De­cem­ber 9 he was sent home from the plat­form to the Ga­le­o­ta ter­mi­nal, where he was sent di­rect­ly home. No one met him to ad­min­is­ter the test,” the work­er said of his co-work­er’s case.

“He took it up­on him­self to vis­it the health cen­tre and did a PCR test. He got re­sults on De­cem­ber 15, which he re­layed to the com­pa­ny. But by the 15th there were oth­ers that start­ed dis­play­ing COVID symp­toms. The medic again did not fol­low pol­i­cy and kept on treat­ing per­sons for flu. This made mat­ters worse, as every­one was un­aware that there was a pos­i­tive case. Pol­i­cy of seg­re­ga­tion of sus­pect­ed COVID cas­es was not fol­lowed.”

He added, “Many mem­bers of the plat­forms de­part­ed and they have not been in­formed. Many may be spread­ing this virus and not know. I be­lieve the truth will set us free.”

Ques­tions sent to the En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan and Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram last evening went unan­swered up to last night.

Peren­co re­sponds

We re­fer to cer­tain state­ments and ar­ti­cles made via Trinidad and To­ba­go me­dia re­gard­ing the sta­tus of per­son­nel on the Samaan and Teak plat­forms op­er­at­ed by Peren­co T&T Lim­it­ed (“Peren­co”).

Dur­ing De­cem­ber 2020, some per­son­nel, who be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing flu-like symp­toms were evac­u­at­ed from the Teak Al­pha plat­form and brought to shore, in keep­ing with Peren­co’s Emer­gency Re­sponse Pro­ce­dure for the man­age­ment of Covid-19. Per­son­nel were sent for PCR test­ing and sub­se­quent­ly Peren­co was no­ti­fied that each of these in­di­vid­u­als had test­ed pos­i­tive for Covid-19. These per­sons were placed in quar­an­tine and are cur­rent­ly un­der the guid­ance of the Min­istry of Health (MOH).

Up­on re­ceipt of con­fir­ma­tion of the first pos­i­tive Covid-19 test re­sult, the In­ci­dent Man­age­ment Team was ac­ti­vat­ed to man­age the sit­u­a­tion. Un­der the ap­proval from the MOH, Peren­co de­ter­mined that a full as­sess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion at a plat­form lev­el was need­ed and all per­son­nel from the Teak Field were PCR test­ed for Covid-19. Fol­low­ing re­ceipt of these re­sults and ap­proval from the MOH, plans were put in place for the safe de­mo­bil­i­sa­tion of all per­son­nel from the Field; this com­menced on Sun­day 20th De­cem­ber, 2020.

Trans­porta­tion of per­son­nel to the des­ig­nat­ed quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty was car­ried out in co­or­di­na­tion with the MOH. Peren­co has con­tin­ued PCR test­ing of all per­son­nel through­out the TSP Field and is con­tin­u­ing to work close­ly with the MOH on the man­age­ment of the sit­u­a­tion to en­sure the health and safe­ty of all at this time.

Peren­co, un­der the guid­ance of the MOH, con­tin­ues to as­sess the sta­tus of all per­son­nel off­shore and take all nec­es­sary mea­sures in­clu­sive of full san­i­ti­za­tion of its fa­cil­i­ties to en­sure the health and safe­ty of its work­force.