The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) has ex­pressed sup­port for the Prime Min­is­ter and the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on the En­er­gy Cham­ber of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing the de­ci­sion to re­assess the cham­ber’s role in the en­er­gy sec­tor and to can­cel the STOW cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem.

In a me­dia state­ment, the OW­TU said it agreed with the Prime Min­is­ter’s view that the En­er­gy Cham­ber has long held a priv­i­leged po­si­tion with­in the sec­tor, which the union said de­vel­oped un­der the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. The union con­tend­ed that the cham­ber pri­mar­i­ly rep­re­sents the in­ter­ests of multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies and ma­jor lo­cal con­trac­tors, while small­er con­trac­tors and work­ers have been ex­clud­ed.

The OW­TU ar­gued that the STOW cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process was cre­at­ed and con­trolled by the En­er­gy Cham­ber and struc­tured in a way that dis­ad­van­taged small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es. Ac­cord­ing to the union, the cost of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion placed it be­yond the reach of many lo­cal con­trac­tors, lim­it­ing their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the in­dus­try.