RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

T&TEC work­ers have been placed on a ro­ta­tion sys­tem, start­ing to­day (Wednes­day), af­ter one of their work­ers in the South Dis­tri­b­u­tion Cen­tre test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 last week.

The 43-year-old me­chan­ic of Pe­nal is ward­ed in a se­ri­ous con­di­tion at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal. A source said his pri­ma­ry con­tacts at the T&TEC fa­cil­i­ty went for test­ing and were await­ing re­sults.

How­ev­er, the source said every­one in his im­me­di­ate fam­i­ly had test­ed pos­i­tive.

"One of the guys who worked with him could have spread it to oth­er em­ploy­ees in oth­er de­part­ments. The test will con­firm ex­act­ly how far this has spread. Work­ers are very un­easy," the source told Guardian Me­dia.

He added: "They have been placed on one day in and one day out ro­ta­tion from Wednes­day. There doesn't seem to be any ur­gency to man­ag­ing op­er­a­tions ac­cord­ing­ly, in light of this con­firmed COVID-19 case."

Workers are back on the job following sanitization at the T&TEC South Distribution Centre in San Fernando. (Image: KRISTIAN DE SILVA)

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Last week, T&TEC's gen­er­al man­ag­er Kelvin Ram­sook said the Com­mis­sion has been san­i­tiz­ing its fa­cil­i­ties on a week­ly ba­sis. He said spe­cif­ic pro­to­cols had been put in place since March but it was on­ly re­cent­ly they re­al­ized that some of the pro­to­cols had been breached.

Those breach­es, he said were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

“We have dis­cov­ered that em­ploy­ees were not com­ply­ing with clear rules and guide­lines," he not­ed.

He stat­ed that since then, man­age­ment has met with se­nior ex­ec­u­tives to en­sure there is com­plete com­pli­ance.

Last May, five work­ers from T&TEC were test­ed af­ter they came in­to con­tact with a pos­i­tive case. T&TEC lat­er is­sued a no­tice say­ing there were no cas­es at the Com­mis­sion but not­ed that one work­er was sent in­to self-iso­la­tion as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure.