Op­er­a­tions at the Co­conut Grow­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (CGA), East­ern Main Road, Laven­tille, were in­ter­rupt­ed for a sec­ond straight day yes­ter­day af­ter re­pairs to a leak­ing am­mo­nia line con­tin­ued.

The leak was dis­cov­ered around 8 am on Tues­day, com­ing from one of the lines that serves the mar­garine de­part­ment and the co­conut oil pro­cess­ing plant.

This led to an evac­u­a­tion of the im­me­di­ate area and re­sult­ed in close to 200 em­ploy­ees be­ing un­able to work as pro­duc­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing had to be shut down due to the risk and health haz­ard it posed.

Al­though an at­tempt was made to ef­fect re­pairs on Wednes­day, em­ploy­ees ex­pressed con­cerns that a quick fix was un­ac­cept­able as the po­ten­tial for a larg­er ex­plo­sion loomed.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 em­ploy­ees have been af­fect­ed.

Shop stew­ard Nathanael Bur­kett said the af­fect­ed area, which is lo­cat­ed at the west­ern end of the com­pound at East­ern Main Road, Laven­tille, re­mained with­out staff yes­ter­day as work­ers had been in­struct­ed to stay well away from the area.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side CGA, Bur­kett claimed sev­er­al shifts had been can­celled while some oth­ers were ad­vised to work off-site.

“The com­pa­ny has been do­ing their best to rec­ti­fy the is­sue,” he said.

De­spite this, Bur­kett was un­able to say when op­er­a­tions would re­sume.

“Our main con­cern is that the com­pa­ny would keep the work­er’s safe­ty in mind and make that a pri­or­i­ty in all things they do­ing,” he added.

Both Bur­kett and branch sec­re­tary Patrice Thomas ex­pressed con­cern for 53 ca­su­al work­ers who would not be paid for the days that the plant was down and they were un­able to work.

Thomas said, “These are the work­ers who are at home right about now, not get­ting paid or any­thing like that.”

She said while they had been told the prob­lem should be rec­ti­fied by to­day, they were un­sure if and when it would be done.

Mean­while, se­nior man­age­ment of­fi­cials yes­ter­day stressed that the lat­est leak was un­re­lat­ed to the one that oc­curred back in June.

Back then, eight em­ploy­ees were treat­ed at hos­pi­tal, and a near­by busi­ness and school were forced to close when a chem­i­cal leak, said to be am­mo­nia, came from the com­pa­ny’s re­frig­er­a­tion sys­tem.

Yes­ter­day, CGA’s Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer, Gabrielle Agos­ti­ni, said steps had been tak­en to en­sure the safe­ty of the work­ers fol­low­ing the de­tec­tion of the leak on Tues­day.

In a re­lease, she said, “The in­ci­dent was prompt­ly iden­ti­fied, and our high­ly trained re­sponse team act­ed im­me­di­ate­ly to con­tain the leak.”

She added, “The sit­u­a­tion was ful­ly un­der con­trol with­in a short pe­ri­od, and there is no threat to our em­ploy­ees, the com­mu­ni­ty or the en­vi­ron­ment.”

Re­gard­ing the in­ci­dent in June, Agos­ti­ni said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion de­ter­mined that a com­pa­ny had dumped harm­ful chem­i­cals in­to a wa­ter­way close to the CGA com­pound.

Agos­ti­ni said, “It was sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed that there were no chem­i­cal leaks that em­anat­ed from CGA Ltd.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the com­pa­ny is mov­ing ahead with plans to re­place the en­tire cool­ing sys­tem.