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A Min­istry of En­er­gy in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the dead­ly June 15, 2023 fire at the Ni­Quan gas-to-liq­uids plant found “in­ad­e­quate lead­er­ship and su­per­vi­sion,” poor risk con­trols, and a break­down in both safe­ty sys­tems and emer­gency re­sponse. The in­ci­dent re­sult­ed in the death of pipe fit­ter Al­lan­lane Ramkissoon. In­ves­ti­ga­tors de­scribed the fa­cil­i­ty as “still strug­gling with ba­sic safe­ty gov­er­nance.”

The re­port, laid in Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, rec­om­mend­ed ur­gent re­forms to train­ing, emer­gency pre­pared­ness, con­trac­tor over­sight, and plant safe­ty sys­tems. It al­so urged a full re­view of the plant’s Man­age­ment of Change process and elim­i­na­tion of vague in­ter­nal terms such as “sky valve” and “lad­der valve.”

Mooni­lal, speak­ing in the House, said the re­port was re­leased to bring trans­paren­cy to the mat­ter and to give Ramkissoon’s fam­i­ly and the pub­lic a full ac­count of what oc­curred. “This re­port is here... so that not on­ly the Ramkissoon fam­i­ly but Trinidad and To­ba­go can look at what went on that night at the Ni­Quan plant,” he said. He al­so ac­cused the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion of spend­ing tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in le­gal fees to block dis­clo­sure of the re­port. “They nev­er gave a ham­per, a dol­lar, an io­ta of as­sis­tance to the fam­i­ly,” he added.