Jan­nelle Bernard

“Job se­cu­ri­ty.”

This is the de­mand be­ing made by some work­ers of The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) who, rep­re­sent­ed by the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU), en­gaged in protest ac­tion out­side of the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The em­ploy­ees said their jobs are in lim­bo and are be­ing threat­ened by con­tract work­ers, as T&TEC has re­fused to fill va­can­cies.

The OW­TU said that the work­ers are skilled, ex­pe­ri­enced and qual­i­fied to fill the po­si­tions, but have been work­ing for many years with­out any as­sur­ances from the Com­mis­sion.

“We have tem­po­rary work­ers that have been on the job six, sev­en, eight years and they are not be­ing con­firmed. The Com­mis­sion re­fus­es to con­firm these work­ers. These are work­ers who hold up the op­er­a­tions in the or­gan­i­sa­tion on a dai­ly ba­sis,” OW­TU Vice Pres­i­dent Reesa Ram­lo­gan said.

Ram­lo­gan added that cus­tomers are be­ing ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed and that this is ev­i­dent in re­cent pow­er out­ages in var­i­ous ar­eas.

The OW­TU has asked for a meet­ing with Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les in an ef­fort to re­as­sure the work­ers as well as guar­an­tee a re­li­able sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty to cus­tomers.

“This prob­lem we are fac­ing at T&TEC is a re­al prob­lem and it is af­fect­ing not on­ly the work­ers it is af­fect­ing the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of sup­ply to the gen­er­al pub­lic,” said Ram­lo­gan.

In a re­sponse to the work­ers’ claims, Min­is­ter Gon­za­les said he is sure that the board and man­age­ment of T&TEC will meet with the union to ad­dress these con­cerns as these are mat­ters for the man­age­ment of T&TEC.

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