RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

A Venezue­lan na­tion­al who suf­fered two work­place in­juries while em­ployed at a me­chan­i­cal con­tract­ing com­pa­ny is ap­peal­ing to the Min­istry of Labour for as­sis­tance, say­ing he has been left with­out an in­come and is strug­gling to sup­port him­self while re­cov­er­ing.

Sha­heed Leonel Sen­cler Ali, 54, said he sus­tained three bro­ken ribs in his first ac­ci­dent on Au­gust 12 and in­jured his foot in a sec­ond in­ci­dent on Oc­to­ber 5.

Ali, who worked as a fab­ri­ca­tor with A&A Me­chan­i­cal Con­trac­tors, said he had re­ceived lit­tle as­sis­tance from his em­ploy­er fol­low­ing the in­ci­dents and had been un­able to re­turn to work.

Re­call­ing his first ac­ci­dent, Ali al­leged he was in­stalling a pipe on a plat­form about six to sev­en feet above the ground when he lost his foot­ing and fell.

He said he was hos­pi­talised for two days and spent an­oth­er three weeks re­cov­er­ing at home.

Ali said he was not wear­ing a safe­ty har­ness be­cause there was no suit­able point to se­cure it. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that he had all the re­quired PPE.

He claimed the com­pa­ny pro­vid­ed him with on­ly med­ica­tion fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, leav­ing him to re­ly on his per­son­al sav­ings while he re­cov­ered.

His sec­ond ac­ci­dent oc­curred on Oc­to­ber 5 while he was han­dling met­al ma­te­ri­als.

Ali said he was mov­ing a piece of an­gle iron when sev­er­al pieces fell on­to his foot, trap­ping it be­neath the met­al for be­tween ten and 15 min­utes.

He was sub­se­quent­ly treat­ed at hos­pi­tal and is still wear­ing a cast, with doc­tors ad­vis­ing him to re­main at home while he re­cov­ers.

Ali said the in­juries have af­fect­ed his abil­i­ty to earn a liv­ing, as he has been un­able to work for about a month since the sec­ond in­ci­dent.

Con­cerned about how he would sup­port him­self, Ali said he need­ed fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance dur­ing his re­cov­ery and em­ploy­ment once he was med­ical­ly fit to re­turn to work.

He sub­se­quent­ly filed re­ports with the Min­istry of Labour and the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty (OS­HA), ap­peal­ing to the Min­istry to in­ter­vene and help him se­cure as­sis­tance dur­ing his re­cu­per­a­tion.

Ali pro­vid­ed med­ical doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to both in­ci­dents, in­clud­ing records from San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

He al­so sup­plied two doc­u­ments bear­ing the com­pa­ny’s let­ter­head and sig­na­tures con­firm­ing his em­ploy­ment there.

He said he had been liv­ing in Trinidad for about six years.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed A&A Me­chan­i­cal Con­trac­tors Ltd man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Azard Ali, who ini­tial­ly said he did not know Sha­heed Leonel Sen­cler Ali.

When told that the work­er was part of his com­pa­ny’s team and had a job let­ter to sup­port this, Azard Ali said he did not deal di­rect­ly with the work­ers.

How­ev­er, he said he would in­ves­ti­gate the work­er’s com­plaints and pro­vide a fur­ther com­ment.