Every­body who works for a con­trac­tor on a down­stream plant in T&T must com­plete an as­sess­ment of their ba­sic HSE (Health, Safe­ty and the En­vi­ron­ment) knowl­edge once every two years. This is called the PLEA as­sess­ment, and it is ad­min­is­tered by the En­er­gy Cham­ber of T&T on be­half of the in­dus­try.

Peo­ple who have to com­plete the PLEA as­sess­ment range from own­ers and lead­ers of con­trac­tors who have to vis­it their work­ers in the field, the skill tech­ni­cians and craft work­ers, through to se­cu­ri­ty guards, labour­ers and jan­i­tors. It is the ba­sic en­try re­quire­ment for all of the plants in Point Lisas, At­lantic and oth­er petro­chem­i­cal plants and pow­er sta­tions.

The num­ber of peo­ple who com­plete the PLEA as­sess­ment is, there­fore, a good proxy for the lev­el of em­ploy­ment in the down­stream in­dus­tri­al sec­tor. As it is valid for two years, the pre­vi­ous two years give a good es­ti­mate of the num­ber of peo­ple who have worked in the sec­tor.

In 2023 and 2024 just over 20,000 peo­ple com­plet­ed the PLEA as­sess­ment. A decade ago, there were many more peo­ple who com­plet­ed the PLEA as­sess­ment, with an ap­prox­i­mate 40 per cent drop in to­tal num­bers. One of the main rea­sons for the de­crease was that the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery was al­so part of the PLEA pro­gramme and there were large num­bers of con­trac­tor work­ers who en­tered the re­fin­ery, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing plant con­struc­tion/up­grade projects.

Many of the peo­ple do­ing the PLEA as­sess­ment will not be em­ployed full time in the sec­tor and just have a tem­po­rary con­tract, and some­times for on­ly a few weeks in a year.

Oth­ers will be full-time em­ploy­ees of con­trac­tors and ser­vice com­pa­nies.

Over 99 per cent of peo­ple com­plet­ing the PLEA as­sess­ment are cit­i­zens of T&T.