Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Work­ers of Nat­pet In­vest­ments Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, a sub­sidiary of the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny (NPMC), are call­ing on Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert and Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al to stop in­ter­fer­ing with their ne­go­ti­a­tions with the com­pa­ny.

To­geth­er with their union, the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU), the dis­grun­tled em­ploy­ees sac­ri­ficed their lunch break yes­ter­day to clar­i­fy their po­si­tion with a protest out­side Din­di­al’s of­fice.

“The CPO has been in­ter­fer­ing with the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing process at Nat­pet,” claimed OW­TU first vice pres­i­dent Sati Ga­jad­har-In­niss, who head­ed the protest.

Ga­jad­har-In­niss said the CPO’s ac­tions were ham­per­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tion process, as they (OW­TU) were sup­posed to meet with the em­ploy­er and ne­go­ti­ate across the ta­ble.

She ex­plained that the man­age­ment of Nat­pet said they could set­tle the ne­go­ti­a­tions above what was of­fered by the CPO, but this was be­ing blocked by Im­bert and Din­di­al.

“If the em­ploy­er, based on their fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion, has the abil­i­ty to pay, no min­is­ter or no com­mit­tee should say to a com­pa­ny that you should set­tle for X or Y. It should be on the abil­i­ty of the em­ploy­er to pay its work­ers who work for them and pro­duce for them. It is based on that that the work­ers are sup­posed to re­ceive the ap­pro­pri­ate re­mu­ner­a­tion,” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to the NPMC web­site, Nat­pet is an owned sub­sidiary of NPMC that op­er­ates an au­to­mat­ed 20lb fill­ing line and a se­mi-au­to­mat­ed 100lb LPG bot­tle fill­ing fa­cil­i­ty at Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain. Nat­pet is charged with the fill­ing, test­ing, and re­fur­bish­ing of Liq­ue­fied Pe­tro­le­um Gas (LPG) cylin­ders. NPMC is a state-owned en­ter­prise.

She said the last they heard from the com­pa­ny was that it would take the union’s coun­ter­pro­pos­al to the CPO.

“The work­ers at Nat­pet con­tin­ue to pro­duce. If it wasn’t for the work­ers at Nat­pet, we would not have the cook­ing gas­es in our homes to be able to cook our food, and those con­di­tions at Nat­pet leave a lot to be de­sired,” she stat­ed.

Ga­jad­har-In­niss said they will con­tin­ue to raise the is­sue un­til the Gov­ern­ment stopped in­ter­fer­ing.

Guardian Me­dia sent an email to the Min­istry of Fi­nance re­quest­ing a re­sponse from the min­is­ter on the is­sue, and al­so made con­tact with the CPO, but no re­sponse was forth­com­ing up un­til press time.