Derek Achong

The Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) yes­ter­day led a group of Petrotrin re­tirees in a peace­ful march over the ter­mi­na­tion of their med­ical plan and an al­leged bil­lion-dol­lar deficit in their pen­sion plan. 

The protest, which in­volved sev­er­al dozen re­tirees, took place out­side the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence and Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s around 4 pm. 

Dressed in union T-shirts and armed with plac­ards and an ef­fi­gy of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the par­tic­i­pants marched at the en­trance of La Fan­tasie Road while chat­ting slo­gans call­ing for him (Dr Row­ley) to im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dress their con­cerns. 

The march took place un­der the watch­ful eye of heav­i­ly armed po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to the lo­ca­tion, who did not block their ac­tiv­i­ty but mere­ly ad­vised them to clear the en­trance when of­fi­cial ve­hi­cles were en­ter­ing or leav­ing. 

In a brief in­ter­view dur­ing the protest, OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get said they raised con­cerns over the med­ical and pen­sion plans in a let­ter sent to Row­ley in late March. He claimed they re­ceived a re­sponse from Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert al­most a month lat­er while Row­ley was abroad. 

“He did not have re­spect for those who pro­duced for this coun­try to re­spond him­self,” Ro­get said. 

He not­ed that Im­bert did not re­spond to the ter­mi­na­tion of the med­ical plan and claimed the pen­sion plan was not in a deficit but rather a sur­plus based on a re­port from an ac­tu­ar­i­al firm com­mis­sioned by the Gov­ern­ment. 

Ro­get said the re­port cit­ed by Im­bert was di­a­met­ri­cal­ly op­posed to an­oth­er pro­duced in June 2020, which stat­ed that the pen­sion plan was in a $4.6 bil­lion deficit at that time. 

“Some­body they paid came up with a re­port stat­ing that the pen­sion plan is not in jeop­ardy, when, in fact, that is so and we con­tin­ue to chal­lenge that,” Ro­get said. 

He said the union was es­pe­cial­ly con­cerned over the ter­mi­na­tion of the med­ical plan, which cov­ered ac­tive work­ers at the time of Petrotrin’s clo­sure and re­tirees. Un­der the plan, re­tirees and ac­tive work­ers and their spous­es were guar­an­teed cov­er­age un­til death. 

“This med­ical plan is not some­thing the com­pa­ny would have giv­en, it is a term and con­di­tion of their em­ploy­ment,” Ro­get said. 

He claimed that re­tirees, who would have de­vel­oped med­ical con­di­tions due to their lengthy ca­reers in the haz­ardous pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try, were left with­out the com­pre­hen­sive med­ical care they were ac­cus­tomed to. 

“The re­tirees have not on­ly run out of pa­tience but they have run out of med­ical care en­tire­ly,” Ro­get said. 

Re­fer­ring to the fact that Row­ley un­der­went med­ical checks af­ter at­tend­ing the IX Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in Los An­ge­les in June, Ro­get said: “Just how you are en­ti­tled to a med­ical plan and you went for the best out of the coun­try, all these Petrotrin for­mer em­ploy­ees are en­ti­tled to a par­tic­u­lar lev­el of med­ical care and at­ten­tion.” 

Al­though Ro­get ad­mit­ted the union has a pend­ing case be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court on the is­sue of the med­ical plan, which is ex­pect­ed to come up for hear­ing in Oc­to­ber, he said it was still ad­vo­cat­ing for the Gov­ern­ment to change its po­si­tion as re­tirees were suf­fer­ing while the case is be­ing slow­ly de­ter­mined by the court. 

“Jus­tice de­layed is jus­tice de­nied be­cause while the mat­ter con­tin­ues for how­ev­er long, re­tirees con­tin­ue to suf­fer and die,” he said. 

Ro­get al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­open the Au­gus­tus Long Hos­pi­tal in Pointe-a-Pierre and med­ical cen­tres at Petrotrin fa­cil­i­ties in Pointe-a-Pierre, Point Fortin, Trin­mar, San­ta Flo­ra, For­est Re­serve, Pe­nal, and Guayagua­yare, where for­mer em­ploy­ees and re­tirees re­ceived med­ical treat­ment and pe­ri­od­ic tests and check-ups. 

Ro­get promised sim­i­lar protest ac­tion un­til the con­cerns are ad­dressed.