Over the last cou­ple of months, petro­chem­i­cals com­pa­ny Pro­man Trinidad and To­ba­go has giv­en over TT$ 1 mil­lion in re­lief and sup­port to front­line health­care work­ers, as well as fence-line com­mu­ni­ties and vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies in its host com­mu­ni­ty of Cou­va.

The com­pa­ny has been mak­ing the var­i­ous do­na­tions along­side its em­ploy­ee donor-match­ing ini­tia­tive, to sup­port na­tion­wide COVID-19 re­lief ef­forts.

In a news re­lease is­sued by the com­pa­ny, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, Claus Cron­berg­er, ex­plains that the Pro­man fam­i­ly of com­pa­nies es­tab­lished part­ner­ships with the Min­istry of Health, lo­cal veg­etable pro­duce farm­ers, su­per­mar­kets and re­lief agen­cies, to make their ini­tia­tives hap­pen.

“Our phi­los­o­phy has al­ways been to sup­port lo­cal de­vel­op­ment, across the coun­try and with­in our com­mu­ni­ties. Dur­ing these un­prece­dent­ed times, we must do our best to es­tab­lish part­ner­ships aimed at pro­vid­ing re­lief as­sis­tance where it is most need­ed,” Cron­berg­er said, “par­tic­u­lar­ly to sup­port the ef­forts of the Gov­ern­ment, our hard-work­ing front­line health­care work­ers and the vul­ner­a­ble per­sons and groups with­in our com­mu­ni­ties.”

He added: “We have al­so placed our em­ploy­ees at the fore­front of our CSR re­sponse, by match­ing their per­son­al do­na­tions to­wards COVID-19 re­lief ef­forts, which takes their gen­eros­i­ty and giv­ing even fur­ther.”

Pro­man Trinidad has com­mit­ted to the dis­tri­b­u­tion of over 3,500 ham­pers over the course of three months—be­tween April and June 2020—in the Cou­va re­gion and more wide­ly, in part­ner­ship with the Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce, the Car­li Bay Fish­er­man’s As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­er re­lief or­ga­ni­za­tions across the coun­try.

“We have part­nered with lo­cal farm­ing as­so­ci­a­tions to take high-qual­i­ty pro­duce that would oth­er­wise have gone to waste, in­clud­ing leafy greens, a range of fresh veg­eta­bles and ground pro­vi­sions, and cre­at­ed healthy fresh food ham­pers—there­by re­duc­ing food waste, and sup­port­ing the liveli­hoods of lo­cal farm­ers while pro­vid­ing food re­lief to those most in need,” the Pro­man man­ag­ing di­rec­tor re­port­ed.

The com­pa­ny fa­cil­i­tat­ed the dis­tri­b­u­tion of 500 food ham­pers in the Cou­va South Dis­trict, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Rudranath In­dars­ingh.  In ad­di­tion, it helped the Wa­ter­loo Po­lice Youth Club and the Freeport Po­lice dis­trib­ute 60 food ham­pers to fam­i­lies of youth club mem­bers.

Pres­i­dent of the Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce, Ram­c­hand Ra­jbal Maraj, says part­ner­ing with Pro­man was cru­cial to their own re­lief ef­forts, and saw 300 food ham­pers be­ing dis­trib­uted across the Greater Cou­va Dis­trict.

“The Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce is ex­treme­ly pleased to part­ner with the Pro­man in host­ing our very suc­cess­ful Food Ham­per Dis­tri­b­u­tion. The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing very se­vere hard­ships ow­ing to the COVID-19 lock-down, and this is tak­ing a heavy toll on those most in need across our na­tion. We are very grate­ful for the kind gen­eros­i­ty of the Pro­man fam­i­ly of com­pa­nies, who have al­ways proven them­selves as a re­spon­si­ble and gen­er­ous Cor­po­rate Cit­i­zen," he said.

Fish­er­folk and vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies will be re­ceiv­ing 500 food ham­pers and 300 veg­etable pro­duce pack­ages per month, be­tween April and June. Pres­i­dent of the Car­li Bay Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, Im­ti­az Khan, says the re­lief ef­forts are ap­pre­ci­at­ed.

“In this pan­dem­ic the Pro­man fam­i­ly of com­pa­nies con­tin­ue to show com­pas­sion for the fish­er­folks and the mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty by join­ing with us to pro­vide much need­ed re­lief sup­plies to our fam­i­lies,” he said. “You con­tin­ue to be a source of sup­port as we part­ner to trans­form Car­li Bay and Per­se­ver­ance, help­ing us to reach our full po­ten­tial as a mod­el com­mu­ni­ty.”

The Match­ing Funds Pro­gramme will see the com­pa­ny match do­na­tions by its more than 1,000 em­ploy­ees to the reg­is­tered char­i­ties of their choice. The com­pa­ny al­so will dou­ble food ham­per do­na­tions made via sev­er­al es­tab­lished food re­lief char­i­ties.

“Em­ploy­ees from across the Pro­man fam­i­ly of com­pa­nies in Trinidad have done tremen­dous work in re­cent weeks to sup­port the vul­ner­a­ble in their com­mu­ni­ties and those who have been par­tic­u­lar­ly im­pact­ed by the COVID-19 out­break,” notes Claus Cron­berg­er, Pro­man’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor.

In part­ner­ship with Heart of Love Foun­da­tion, 100 food ham­pers will be giv­en to sin­gle moth­ers and the el­der­ly. Pro­man al­so is pro­vid­ing some TT$75,000 worth of spon­sor­ship to Nour­ishTT’s on­line na­tion­al food dri­ve.

Be­tween May and June, Pro­man has com­mit­ted to the dis­tri­b­u­tion of over 600 per­son­al care pack­ages to front-line health­care staff.

“This is be­ing done in part­ner­ship with the Min­istry of Health,” Cron­berg­er ex­plains. “These pack­ages con­sist of a range of es­sen­tial per­son­al care and hy­giene items and are go­ing to the en­camped and sup­port med­ical staff at the Cau­ra and Cou­va Hos­pi­tals over a two-month pe­ri­od. We are work­ing close­ly with se­nior of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Health to en­sure this ini­tia­tive is in line with cur­rent needs of staff, as well as es­tab­lished guide­lines and pro­to­cols at the hos­pi­tals,” he adds.

Pro­man Trinidad al­so sup­port­ed the UWI Against COVID-19 Project by pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise in Process En­gi­neer­ing, to man­u­fac­ture es­sen­tial health­care equip­ment to our na­tion’s hos­pi­tals.

About Pro­man

Pro­man is an in­te­grat­ed in­dus­tri­al group and glob­al leader in nat­ur­al gas de­rived prod­ucts and ser­vices. Head­quar­tered in Switzer­land, with as­sets in the Unit­ed States, Trinidad and To­ba­go and Oman, and on­go­ing ex­pan­sion in­to Mex­i­co, Pro­man is the world’s sec­ond largest methanol pro­duc­er and one of the ten lead­ing fer­til­iz­er com­pa­nies.

Pro­man is al­so a sig­nif­i­cant ser­vices busi­ness, with ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in petro­chem­i­cal plant op­er­a­tions, petro­chem­i­cal and pow­er plant con­struc­tion, prod­uct mar­ket­ing and lo­gis­tics, and project man­age­ment. The busi­ness of­fers a ful­ly in­te­grat­ed, di­ver­si­fied plat­form across the whole val­ue chain from the pro­duc­tion and con­ver­sion of nat­ur­al gas to the mar­ket­ing and de­liv­ery of end prod­ucts to its cus­tomers.

Pro­man has been com­mit­ted to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor for over 30 years, con­tin­u­al­ly re-in­vest­ing to ex­pand its port­fo­lio to in­clude methanol, an­hy­drous am­mo­nia, urea am­mo­ni­um ni­trate and melamine. The Pro­man fam­i­ly of com­pa­nies em­ploys over 1,000 em­ploy­ees in the coun­try, ac­count­ing for two-thirds of Pro­man’s glob­al work­force.