Minister of Labour, Joseph Hamilton yesterday said that he never received any report concerning 39-year-old Tanesha Fredericks who was reportedly forced to work without adequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) on an offshore rig while employed by Trinidad oil company—Centipede Offshore (Guyana) Inc.
Fredericks had told Stabroek News that she approached the Ministry of Labour to complain of her treatment but was told that it was too expensive to go on the rig to investigate. She was told, however, that someone would visit the company’s office in Georgetown.
In brief comments to Stabroek News yesterday, Hamilton said that he had never received any report that would suggest that Fredericks had reported the matter to the Ministry.
“As far as I know that matter never came to my attention at the Ministry of Labour. I was unaware of the matter until I saw a news report,” he said. Stabroek News carried several reports on the case.
Hamilton said that while Fredericks was granted a default judgment by the High Court in the matter, she can still visit the Ministry to make a formal report after which an investigation can be launched.
“Once she makes a formal report, I will have someone investigate the matter,” he said.
Efforts again by Stabroek News to contact Centipede for a comment proved futile. Centipede provides services to ExxonMobil here.
Fredericks, a mother of two disclosed that she started working as a utilities cleaner with the company in September last year. When she got onboard the offshore rig, she was assigned to do laundry but instead of giving her masks and industrial strength gloves to do her work, they gave her surgical gloves. Having received no prior information or training on what safety measures she should take when washing those types of clothing, she set to work, exposing herself to the chemicals on the clothing.
A few weeks later, she started noticing that the colour of her fingers was turning into what she described as a greenish and bluish hue. Thereafter her skin and nails started peeling off and eventually her fingers started swelling.
The doctor at the hospital explained to her that her fingers were severely burnt by the chemicals she was exposed to and that the cells were dead. Fredericks stated that while onshore the state of her fingers worsened and they were numb save for the shooting pains at the tip of each finger. She was terminated from the job last November.
She decided to seek legal counsel and eventually filed a lawsuit against the company, stating that Centipede Offshore Inc had provided her with substandard gloves not suited for handling toxic chemicals and cleaning agents.
Fredericks in her Statement of Claim before the High Court sought an order that $1 million be granted to her as default judgment for what she said was negligence on the part of her employer for the burns she suffered on October 28 and 29, 2020.
According to court documents seen by this newspaper, she also sought special damages for medical expenses, loss of income, loss of earning capacity, interest thereon, court costs and any other order the Court deemed just to grant.
With no defence having been filed by the Defendant (Centipede Inc) High Court Judge Fidela Corbin-Lincoln in a ruling handed down last month, granted Fredericks a default judgment.
The judge has set October 21st of this year for an assessment of the quantum of damages that will be awarded.
