DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Trade union lead­ers are echo­ing the call for em­ploy­ers to en­gage with staff on cop­ing with the swel­ter­ing heat be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced across the coun­try.

They had their say on the mat­ter af­ter In­dus­tri­al Court pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Thomas-Fe­lix spoke on the is­sue on Tues­day.

Fol­low­ing the open­ing of the In­dus­tri­al Court law term yes­ter­day, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union (CWU) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Clyde El­der said work­ers, such as se­cu­ri­ty guards who work in booths with in­suf­fi­cient ven­ti­la­tion, are al­ready be­ing af­fect­ed. He called out em­ploy­ers who are fail­ing to up­hold the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (OSH) reg­u­la­tions which man­date all em­ploy­ers to pro­vide ba­sic ameni­ties such as drink­ing wa­ter, es­pe­cial­ly amid these cir­cum­stances.

“I am amazed at how many em­ploy­ees have to buy wa­ter to car­ry to work for them to drink. The em­ploy­er does not pro­vide it! I have some friends work­ing in the ju­di­cia­ry and they have to buy their own wa­ter to car­ry to work,” he claimed.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPSS­WA) pres­i­dent Gideon Dick­son ac­knowl­edged that on-the-field po­lice of­fi­cers are in the line of fire when it comes to scorch­ing tem­per­a­tures dai­ly.

He said the con­cerns raised by Thomas-Fe­lix would be tak­en to the man­age­ment of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

“It is an ad­just­ment that the of­fi­cers have to make, es­pe­cial­ly our op­er­a­tional of­fi­cers. We would en­cour­age them to con­tin­ue to re­hy­drate them­selves but hav­ing said so there is al­ways need for im­prove­ment,” he said.

He added that mon­ey had been in­vest­ed to pur­chase portable air con­di­tion units which are be­ing moved to dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions on a con­tin­u­ous ba­sis. How­ev­er, he said new­er build­ings should be out­fit­ted with prop­er air con­di­tion­ing units.

“There needs to be a plan B as it re­lates to how you con­struct build­ings and be able to put per­sons in those places,” Dick­son said.

Mean­while, Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get said the or­gan­i­sa­tion has been ahead of the game as it re­lates to cli­mate change.

He said dur­ing pre­vi­ous rounds of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, cli­mate change was placed high on the agen­da. How­ev­er, he said these pro­pos­als were ig­nored by the State.

“As you call for health and safe­ty pro­tec­tion, they ma­lign you and make you feel and make the pub­lic feel that you are call­ing for in­creased wages and you are call­ing for some­thing that the work­ers do not de­serve,” he said.

The pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce (GS­FCC) Ki­ran Singh said the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty was ready and will­ing to en­gage with their re­spec­tive hu­man re­source de­part­ments and em­ploy­ees to de­ter­mine what is re­quired to make their work spaces more com­fort­able.

He al­so ac­knowl­edged that cer­tain jobs, of­ten con­duct­ed out­doors, may need to adapt.

(See page 8)