President general of the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) Ancel Roget has denied that workers were involved in Wednesday’s islandwide power outage.
Responding to questions during a virtual press conference yesterday, Roget commended workers from both the Power Generation Company of Trinidad and Tobago and the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC) for their efforts in ensuring electricity was restored.
“I can comment forcefully that on the basis of the information we know we possess, no workers committed any act—small, medium or large of sabotage. Those workers saved the country from plunging into further chaos by restoring power,” he said.
Roget said that while an investigation will have to be done to determine what caused the outage, he was certain there was no sabotage by workers.
Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales and T&TEC General Manager Kelvin Ramsook have also both said that they see no evidence of sabotage.
Shortly after Wednesday’s blackout, social media speculators suggested workers were responsible for the incident as it also marked the deadline to the government’s one-month extension to its mandatory vaccine policy.
Meanwhile, Roget again warned the government to cease and desist from making vaccines compulsory for public servants. The union boss said unions stood ready to push back against any policy decision.
“We are prepared to do whatever becomes necessary to ensure the rights of individuals are defended, whose rights we have are scared, they did not come just like that, we would have fought for it, and we feel very passionate about it.”
