WESTERN BUREAU — One week after work resumed on the Jamaica Public Service Company’s (JPSCo’s) $126-million expansion project at Bogue, workers again brought it to a halt by staging a violent protest at the site yesterday.

The irate crew closed the plant’s gates, locked site manager Carlton Hall inside a container and threatened to set it ablaze. They were protesting against the planned scaling down of work done by one of the sub-contractors, Neville L Daley and Company, and the envisioned job losses. They also reportedly threatened and threw stones at JPSCo employees.

“Mr Daley deh yah from day one on the site de deal wid we… A we done mek the place so it nuh mek no sense a next man go come in and nyam de food,” said Everton Jackson, a labourer on the site. “Dem waan come put out Mr Daley and bring in TankWeld (Metals). Tankweld now… go bring in pure (Kingston) man… So right now we haffi defend our food inna our zone. We nuh want Mr Daley fi go because if Mr Daley go, we nah go have no job. TankWeld go push out all a wi and carry in town people.”

Jackson continued: “The whole a we out yah a sufferer. The whole a we have bills, have youth a go a school, we live inna rent house. Some a we woman a decide fi lef’ we cause a no work, so now that we get a little work why we can’t stay inna it?”

He said that they would defend Daley and prevent any job loss among them should TankWeld Metals assume some of the work being done by Daley. Jackson also said that he and his colleagues would lock down the project if they were sent home.

Yesterday, the JPSCo said that the workers need not have been concerned about their jobs because the company had taken over a number of contracts with sub-contractors who had been employed by Manning Industries. The move, JPSCo said, was to ensure that the project continued as scheduled.

“In order to maintain the project’s momentum in meeting its timeline, the company has re-organised the project team. One of the contractors’ scope of work has been scaled back and another contractor brought on site to complement the work effort,” the JPSCo said in a news release.

“These changes caused concern among workers employed by the contractor and some persons became disruptive on the construction site this morning as a result of a misunderstanding about the impact of their terms of employment,” the firm said.

Following a meeting with workers, JPSCo representatives and officials of TankWeld Metals and Neville Daley and Associates at the site late yesterday afternoon, the expectation is that work should resume today.

An Observer source who was present at the meeting said the decision had been taken to allow work to proceed as usual, with Daley doing all the civil works and TankWeld continuing to do the steel works and supply the site with materials.

Yesterday’s disturbance came just over a week after work on the project resumed following the firing of American contractors, Manning Industries for their reported failure to meet financial obligations of their contract.

After the Americans were terminated, JPSCo took the decision to have the sub-contractors — TankWeld Metals, Neville Daley and Associates and Mobile Welding — along with experts from Mirant Corporation complete the job.

On completion, the $126-million project is expected to add 80 megawatts of new capacity to the grid this year and another 40 megawatts by the middle of 2003.