UNC’s Point Fortin candidate and vice president of the Oilfields’ Workers Trade Union (OWTU) Ernesto Kesar says a UNC government will create corporate manslaughter legislation.
Kesar was speaking to the media along the Southern Main Road in Point Fortin on April 4, just after filing his nomination papers at the Patrick Gordon Building.
He spoke briefly about the Paria diving tragedy.
On February 25, 2022, Land and Marine Construction Services (LMCS) divers Kazim Ali Jnr, Rishi Nagassar, Fyzal Kurban, Yusuf Henry and Christopher Boodram were sucked into a 30-inch pipeline at Paria’s Pointe-a-Pierre facility. Only Boodram survived.
A commission of enquiry (CoE) probed the incident that same year, concluding that Paria should be charged with corporate manslaughter.
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There are currently no laws in TT specific to corporate manslaughter, though a company can be found criminally liable under common law.
On April 3, Prime Minister Stuart Young announced the families of the divers who died, as well as the lone survivor, will be given $1 million each.
Kesar asked why the government waited so long to compensate the families, especially after $15 million was spent on the CoE.
But he added, “When are you going to go to Parliament and change the laws to deal with (corporate manslaughter)?”
He continued, “You not going to do that because come April 29 (the day after the general election), we will be in the government and we will ensure that it happens.”
Kesar told Newsday the laws must be amended and a UNC government would bring the appropriate act to Parliament.
He also spoke on the topic of energy, saying he was not convinced a PNM government would hire locals when operations restart at the Pointe-a-Pierre refinery.
At a PNM meeting in San Fernando on April 2, Young said Oando PLC – the Nigerian company that is the preferred bidder for the refinery – will not hire foreign workers.
Young said the government negotiated with the company and former refinery workers will be used.
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Kesar said it was the same PNM government that promised it would not shut down Petrotrin, so he is not quick to believe that.
“In case yuh was opening yuh fridge and yuh forget, (former prime minister Dr Keith Rowley said), ‘We not closing down Petrotrin.’ He said that on a particular night and (then) every single one of us received letters to go home.”
He said it is “political season” so some politicians would say anything.
He also asked why Petrotrin workers were fired “in the first place.”
He added, “Is it that it is I alone or the people in the UNC or the rest of the public alone who are observing that Oando has been coming under severe fire for their financial misgivings? It’s all over the international news.”
He called on Young to make the details of the contract for the refinery public.
“It can’t be that for the last seven years, you shut down the refinery, decimate workers, destroy the foreign exchange in TT, and you are now about to give the refinery to a company that has woeful financial misgivings.”
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