Energy Chamber to review its internal governance amid STOW controversy

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Hun­dreds of re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy stake­hold­ers gath­ered yes­ter­day at the Hy­att Re­gency for the En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s an­nu­al con­fer­ence, but the most strik­ing pres­ence was the ab­sence of state-owned en­er­gy com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

The boy­cott fol­lowed a sharp in­ter­ven­tion last week by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who launched a scathing at­tack on the En­er­gy Cham­ber, ac­cus­ing it of serv­ing for­eign multi­na­tion­als and nar­row spe­cial in­ter­ests while mar­gin­al­is­ing lo­cal con­trac­tors and un­der­min­ing state-owned en­er­gy com­pa­nies.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so an­nounced the with­draw­al of the Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for the con­fer­ence and the re­moval of state-owned en­ter­pris­es from par­tic­i­pa­tion in re­sponse to con­cerns sur­round­ing the Safe To Work (STOW) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme ad­min­is­tered by the En­er­gy Cham­ber.

Ad­dress­ing del­e­gates yes­ter­day at the Hy­att Re­gency ho­tel, En­er­gy Cham­ber chair Mala Bali­raj ac­knowl­edged the back­lash and sig­nalled a shift in tone, com­mit­ting to re­flec­tion, re­view and re­form.

“We got some tough feed­back. I will al­so note that, in the spir­it of con­struc­tive feed­back, we have tak­en the mes­sage to heart. We have com­mit­ted to re­flect, re­view, and make changes as need­ed,” Bali­raj said.

She said the cham­ber in­tend­ed to repo­si­tion it­self to fa­cil­i­tate struc­tured en­gage­ment with the Gov­ern­ment and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

“Our in­ten­tion is al­ways to work to­wards a col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach with all of our stake­hold­ers. As such, we hope to be able to repo­si­tion and cre­ate a space for open and struc­tured en­gage­ment with the Gov­ern­ment that sup­ports the best out­comes for the sec­tor,” she said.

Bali­raj ex­pressed con­fi­dence that changes would lead to im­proved out­comes, adding that the cham­ber re­mained com­mit­ted to en­gag­ing all stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing state en­ter­pris­es.

“We place the in­ten­tion that over time, we can re­turn to a sit­u­a­tion in which state en­ter­pris­es, Min­istry of En­er­gy of­fi­cials, and oth­er state play­ers can par­tic­i­pate in this valu­able space,” she said.

She out­lined that the cham­ber had al­ways val­ued their con­tri­bu­tions and hoped to wel­come them back. Bali­raj said it was not prac­ti­cal to ad­dress every is­sue raised over the past week but iden­ti­fied three mat­ters cen­tral to the cham­ber’s pur­pose.

The first was the Safe To Work pro­gramme, which she said had be­come a point of con­tention among stake­hold­ers who be­lieved it no longer met its orig­i­nal in­tent.

“Some stake­hold­ers do not be­lieve that the Safe to Work pro­gramme is meet­ing its orig­i­nal in­tent, to both im­prove safe­ty stan­dards and to fa­cil­i­tate the abil­i­ty of small­er lo­cal con­trac­tors to pre-qual­i­fy with ma­jor op­er­a­tor com­pa­nies,” Bali­raj said.

She ac­knowl­edged con­cerns that the pro­gramme had at times served as a bar­ri­er to do­ing busi­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly due to costs as­so­ci­at­ed with con­sult­ing ad­vice and staff train­ing.
Bali­raj said that giv­en the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion, the cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion of con­trac­tor safe­ty man­age­ment cer­ti­fi­ca­tion would not be main­tained.

“What comes next for con­trac­tor safe­ty man­age­ment and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion must be built on the best el­e­ments we have as an in­dus­try and im­prove the ar­eas that do not work well,” she said, adding that this must be achieved through con­sul­ta­tion.

She stressed that safe­ty stan­dards could not be com­pro­mised. “Our in­dus­try needs ro­bust, high-qual­i­ty safe­ty prac­tices to be main­tained. This is not a the­o­ret­i­cal is­sue but a day-to-day op­er­at­ing re­al­i­ty,” she said.

The sec­ond is­sue ad­dressed was the per­cep­tion that the En­er­gy Cham­ber is dom­i­nat­ed by multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions.
Bali­raj said the cham­ber’s rough­ly 400 mem­bers in­clud­ed com­pa­nies of all sizes and own­er­ship struc­tures, and that gov­er­nance mech­a­nisms were de­signed to pre­vent dom­i­nance by any one group.

“Giv­en the cur­rent per­cep­tion, we clear­ly have to do bet­ter,” she said, com­mit­ting to a re­view of in­ter­nal gov­er­nance to en­sure bal­anced rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

In re­sponse, for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan told Guardian Me­dia that the cre­ation of a sin­gle safe­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem had been well in­ten­tioned but flawed in ex­e­cu­tion.

“The En­er­gy Cham­ber needs to es­tab­lish a stan­dard­ised and recog­nised cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme to re­place the many com­pa­ny-spe­cif­ic regimes that ex­ist­ed be­fore was a step in the right di­rec­tion. How­ev­er, if it were prop­er­ly de­signed, a sin­gle cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme should not in­crease costs; it should re­duce them, while strength­en­ing safe­ty cul­ture in this coun­try and im­prov­ing in­ter­na­tion­al cred­i­bil­i­ty.”

Bachan said any sys­tem must bal­ance safe­ty with fair­ness. “Any stan­dard­ised cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme must bal­ance two equal­ly im­por­tant ob­jec­tives–rig­or­ous safe­ty and qual­i­ty as­sur­ance. And sec­ond­ly, ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and fair­ness, so that com­pli­ance does not be­come a fi­nan­cial gate­keep­ing mech­a­nism,” she said.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said an in­de­pen­dent body was re­quired to pre­serve le­git­i­ma­cy and pub­lic con­fi­dence, in­su­lat­ed from com­mer­cial in­ter­ests and gov­erned by trans­par­ent rules.
She said col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the En­er­gy Cham­ber was es­sen­tial to de­ter­mine what re­places STOW, warn­ing that safe­ty sys­tems could not sim­ply be aban­doned.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young ques­tioned the re­moval of STOW re­quire­ments for state-owned en­er­gy com­pa­nies, say­ing safe­ty stan­dards are crit­i­cal, par­tic­u­lar­ly for op­er­a­tions in­volv­ing in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.
“It does con­cern me be­cause, of course, STOW cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is all about safe­ty,” Young said.

He ques­tioned whether STOW was a pri­vate or in­ter­na­tion­al re­quire­ment dri­ven by multi­na­tion­al op­er­a­tors, not­ing that many en­er­gy as­sets had for­eign share­hold­ers who man­dat­ed safe­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

What is STOW?

The STOW frame­work was de­signed as a pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem, re­quir­ing ser­vice providers to meet min­i­mum health, safe­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards be­fore bid­ding for en­er­gy con­tracts. Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion was is­sued for one or two years, de­pend­ing on as­sess­ment scores across sev­er­al el­e­ments and a phys­i­cal con­di­tions tour of work­sites.
On its web­site, the En­er­gy Cham­ber ex­plained that com­pa­nies seek­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion were re­quired to ap­ply through the cham­ber and pay a se­ries of fees. An ap­pli­ca­tion fee was payable to the En­er­gy Cham­ber, with rates vary­ing by mem­ber­ship sta­tus and risk cat­e­go­ry.