Fuel
frenzy at gas stations
By Roxanne Stapleton
Trinidad Express
Port
Spain
Petroleumworldtt.com
02 18 07
FANTASTIC FRIDAY turned frenzied as drivers along
the East/West corridor and Central Trinidad searched
for fuel, as word spread yesterday that National
Petroleum workers were protesting.
Scores
of NP workers downed tools yesterday-the third time
in four months-as allowance negotiations soured
between the company and the workers' bargaining
unit, the Oilfields Workers' Trade Union.
While
the company and union agreed to a 15 per cent wage
hike for NP workers last December, agreement on
cost of living, subsistence, upkeep, meal, disturbance
and other allowances remained outstanding.
Panic
buying started yesterday as drivers rushed to service
stations to fill their tanks, leaving premium, diesel
and super unleaded fuel hoses dry, in many instances,
by noon.
This,
even as NP's corporate communications manager, Nneka
Luke assured that there was no gas shortage and
that supplies would remain constant.
She
said that fuel supply trucks would continue their
refuel rounds at service stations and pleaded with
drivers to go about their normal business and not
panic buy.
Long
lines at several service stations added to massive
traffic jams.
Many
drivers insisted that they would not leave the lines
until fuel trucks replenished storage tanks at the
stations, since they did not know what the Carnival
weekend would bring.
One
attendant at a service station at Richmond Street,
Port of Spain, just after noon said: "We have
no premium, no diesel and a very long line."
Standing
on the picket line just outside NP's Sea Lots offices,
OWTU's vice president for the Port of Spain Marketing
Branch, Peter Ransome, said: "Our allowances
are still not finalised. Last week NP and the union
verbally agreed to 22 cents for every one point
increase in the Cost of Living Index.
"Now
they've reverted to 14 cents and other ridiculous
proposals for other cost items. We've decided to
withhold our labour... we have to come to an agreement
," he said.
Trinidad
Express
Saturday, February 17th 2007
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©2006 Trinidad Express. All Rights Reserved.
