The fi­nal re­port in­to the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Paria Div­ing Tragedy has been “mar­gin­al­ly” de­layed, ac­cord­ing to chair­man Jerome Lynch, KC.

The rea­son, he said, is to avoid any po­ten­tial lit­i­ga­tion.

The fi­nal re­port was due to be de­liv­ered to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo on Au­gust 31.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, chair­man Lynch ex­plained that the de­lays are due to him be­ing very metic­u­lous in en­sur­ing every­one named in the re­port, es­pe­cial­ly those who may be por­trayed in a neg­a­tive light, have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond.

“The com­mis­sion has and con­tin­ues to per­mit those in­volved the widest pos­si­ble lat­i­tude to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions whilst at the same time bear­ing in mind that this re­port needs to be con­clud­ed as swift­ly as jus­tice can pro­vide,” the re­lease read.

“To that end the com­mis­sion has giv­en the par­ties ex­tra time to pro­vide their writ­ten re­spons­es where they have asked and the com­mis­sion still awaits some.”

The com­mis­sion had been called to ex­am­ine the Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, in­ci­dent where LM­CS divers Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Yusuf Hen­ry and Christo­pher Boodram dis­ap­peared in­to a pipeline un­der­wa­ter while con­duct­ing works at Paria Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed in Pointe-a-Pierre. Boodram was the sole sur­vivor.

In a vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence back in May, Lynch said he did not an­tic­i­pate the vol­ume of ev­i­dence that he need­ed to go through. He gave those in re­ceipt of “salmon let­ters” un­til June to re­ply.

Fur­ther adding to Lynch’s de­ter­mi­na­tion to en­sure all is well is the out­come of a re­cent case in the High Court be­tween For­mer Ude­cott chair­man Calder Hart and Ude­cott in the Las Al­turas Com­mis­sion of En­quiry and an­oth­er case from the UK, R (Hex­press Health­care Ltd) –v- Care Qual­i­ty Com­mis­sion (2023) EW­CA Civ 238.

“These cas­es deal with a range of is­sues to en­sure fair­ness to every­one and that the par­ties have a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty to make their case in par­tic­u­lar where there are to be crit­i­cisms of in­di­vid­u­als that may af­fect their ca­reers and lead to rec­om­men­da­tions as to crim­i­nal con­duct or a po­ten­tial for the breach of a du­ty of care,” Lynch ex­plained in the re­lease.

“This Com­mis­sion of En­quiry has sought to en­sure that very out­come and every­thing it has done has been to en­sure that no one is shut out.”

Lynch said his com­mis­sion has re­ceived 400 pages of re­spons­es which it will need to ad­dress.

“This process gen­er­ates de­lay but it is a price worth pay­ing to en­sure a ro­bust re­port in­su­lat­ed from un­fair­ness,” Lynch said.

The com­mis­sion orig­i­nal­ly promised to is­sue the re­port by East­er, then pushed that dead­line back to Au­gust.