OWTU backs Government stance on Energy Chamber, STOW

The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) has ex­pressed sup­port for the Prime Min­is­ter and the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on the En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing the de­ci­sion to re­assess the cham­ber’s role in the en­er­gy sec­tor and to can­cel the STOW cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem.

In a me­dia state­ment, the OW­TU said it agreed with the Prime Min­is­ter’s view that the En­er­gy Cham­ber has long held a priv­i­leged po­si­tion with­in the sec­tor, which the union said de­vel­oped un­der the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. The union con­tend­ed that the cham­ber pri­mar­i­ly rep­re­sents the in­ter­ests of multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies and ma­jor lo­cal con­trac­tors, while small­er con­trac­tors and work­ers have been ex­clud­ed.

The OW­TU ar­gued that the STOW cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process was cre­at­ed and con­trolled by the En­er­gy Cham­ber and struc­tured in a way that dis­ad­van­taged small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es. Ac­cord­ing to the union, the cost of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion placed it be­yond the reach of many lo­cal con­trac­tors, lim­it­ing their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the in­dus­try.

The union al­so raised con­cerns about oc­cu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and health, stat­ing that de­spite the pro­mo­tion of STOW as a bench­mark for safe­ty com­pli­ance, fa­tal­i­ties oc­curred at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny while STOW re­quire­ments were in place. The OW­TU said these in­ci­dents demon­strat­ed that cer­ti­fi­ca­tion alone does not guar­an­tee work­er safe­ty.

The state­ment re­it­er­at­ed the union’s po­si­tion that health and safe­ty stan­dards should be en­forced through statu­to­ry reg­u­la­tion, ac­tive State over­sight, and unionised work­places where work­ers can mon­i­tor con­di­tions on a dai­ly ba­sis.

The OW­TU said the Gov­ern­ment’s move to re­assess the En­er­gy Cham­ber and end STOW was nec­es­sary to ad­dress mo­nop­o­lis­tic prac­tices and to place work­er safe­ty and fair­ness at the cen­tre of the en­er­gy sec­tor. The union said it re­mains com­mit­ted to work­ing with the Gov­ern­ment on a frame­work fo­cused on work­er pro­tec­tion and na­tion­al in­ter­est.