Indarsingh calls on gov’t to pay retrenched Petrotrin workers
Couva South Member of Parliament Rudranath Indarsingh is today calling on Finance Minister Colm Imbert, Energy Minister Franklyn Khan and Labour Minister Jennifer Baptiste-Primus to explain why over 100 former Petrotrin workers have not been paid their full settlement remuneration packages by the defunct oil company.
Indarsingh said that this is totally unacceptable given the assurances and commitment made to the workers by the Keith Rowley-led Cabinet that they would have been paid prior to the Company’s last day of operations – November 30, 2018.
“Why is that that these former employees now have to seek redress and intervention from the Industrial Court to get what is theirs; why the continued anti-worker stance from this Administration?”
Indarsingh said that as a former Trade Union President, he continues to witness with amazement and disbelief the continued violation of the Retrenchment and Severance Benefits Act that is there to protect the rights and hard-earned benefits that Trade Unions had secured for their members. In this case, Petrotrin had until December 30, 2018 to pay these workers their outstanding monies but seven weeks past that date, the workers are literally begging for what is due to them.
He questioned which authority had the responsibility for ensuring that the workers received their monies from the defunct State-owned Petrotrin. Is it the Central Government or the new company that assumed the operations of Petrotrin, Trinidad and Tobago Petroleum Holding Company Ltd?
The Couva South MP called the non-payment of redundancy entitlements as being mean-spirited by the Government who he says have ignored the many years of loyal service that these employees had made to Petrotrin.
He again was very critical of the approach by the Minister of Labour and Small Enterprise Development Jennifer Baptiste-Primus who has been promising to update and modernise important labour legislations, such as the Industrial Relations act and the Retrenchment & Separation Benefits Act but so far has been part of an Administration which has continually undermined the principles of good industrial relations practices and labour laws since it came into office in September 2015.
Indarsingh, a former Minister of State in the Ministries of Labour and Finance in the People’s Partnership Administration, said he was not surprise at this turn of events since even before Petrotrin’s closure was announced, the Rowley-led Cabinet had been blatantly dishonest with the country on the course of action it had adopted with regards to the closure of the refinery.
Indarsingh is calling on the Government to prevent this matter from going before the Industrial Court and hopes that the retrenched workers will be paid their monies within the next week.