PRESIDENT of the Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM) Ancel Roget is stoutly defending electricity workers from any notion or allegation of sabotage for Wednesday’s Trinidad-wide power outage.
To the contrary, Roget said, both the Powergen and TTEC workers saved the country from plunging into further chaos by working around the clock to restore power.
At a virtual news conference to address Government’s mandatory vaccination policy which was scheduled to go into effect on February 17, Roget, on behalf of JTUM, “thanked all those workers who would have risked their lives in the darkness last night to ensure power is restored.”
He said they are among workers whose jobs are being threatened by the Government for exercising their rights not to take the jab.
“I want to state categorically, workers TTEC and Powergen are in no way, shape or form, involved in the past, present or yesterday’s activity,
“There was a failure. Some proper investigations would determine the source of that failure. Until that occurs, we will not comment, but I can comment forcefully on the basis of the information we now possess, no workers were engaged in any act – small, medium or large – of sabotage.
“The workers saved the country from plunging into further chaos by restoring power. We are talking today because of the same workers they are looking to blame. They are always looking for somebody to blame. I am not surprised, because they cannot blame covid or the Opposition.
“I can tell you, speaking on behalf of those workers we – the Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU) – represent, I can say categorically that workers are not responsible.
“I want to make it very clear, whatever conspiracy theory who ever might have, our workers are the ones who corrected the situation.”
The country was plunged into darkness for just over ten hours on Wednesday, following a fault which developed on TTEC’s transmission system when a 12 kilovolt (kv) line came into contact with TTEC's 228 kv main transmission line from Ghandi Village to Union Estate, just before 1 pm on Wednesday.
“We take for granted, the input of workers who go to work at all different shifts, who burn the midnight oil, who, while the country is asleep, are at work.
“There is no pay that can compensate for the sleepless night and all the toil that those workers would do to ensure that the country’s economy continues, that the wheels of the economy continue to turn, that all of the classes this morning, all of the schools this morning can get electricity, that all of the devices and so on are turned on.
“That all of the business places can get electricity to day, that did not happen by guess. As we flick the switch, we take for granted that the lights must come on, but we do not take into account the processes that would be responsible for that, which processes would not work unless it carries the valued input of that human body – workers at the end of the day.”
He said this is one of the sectors G
