Byron Buckley, News Editor
SIX MONTHS after an accident claimed the lives of three workers at the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) plant at Old Harbour Bay, St. Catherine, the matter remains unresolved due to the absence of a conclusive autopsy report.
"We are waiting on the autopsy report; it does not have anything to do with our ministry but we have to wait until we get the results," Neville Moodie, director of industrial safety at the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, informed The Gleaner yesterday.
Two contract workers and a JPS employee - Arthur Williams, Woodford Brown and Owen Townsend - collapsed while carrying out duties on an area of the plant that pulls water from the sea to cool power-generating units.
Colleagues of the workmen alleged that they were rendered unconscious and killed by toxic fumes.
An autopsy was done earlier, but it was inconclusive as to the cause of the men's deaths. Therefore, further and more conclusive information on the deaths was required.
CALLING ON A REGULAR BASIS
"We have been calling on a regular basis to get the results but so far unsuccessfully," related Moodie.
Yesterday the light and power company said it was anxiously awaiting the conclusion of the investigations into the fatal accident.
"We need this autopsy to be an objective test that is done by an impartial body, hence the (Labour) Ministry's involvement," said Winsome Callum, head of communications at JPS. "It is something that we definitely want to bring closure to. There are a number of persons who have vested interest in getting this thing brought to some conclusion, particularly the family."
However, queries to the Ministry of National Security yesterday, as to the reasons behind the delay in concluding the post-mortem examination, shed no light on the matter. A ministry spokesman promised to provide a response, which was not forth coming by press time.
Ms. Callum also said the company had "intensified" its safety programmes to "minimise all possibility of accidents", in apparent response to recommendations by the Labour Ministry following the accident.
"We went as far as to ask the company to change the procedures and they have done so, because since then they have cleaned the place and used the procedure that they should have used in the first place," said the Labour Ministry's industrial safety official.
