Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty and Agency (OS­HA) has al­ready filed a mat­ter against Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd and Land and Ma­rine and Con­struc­tion Ser­vices (LM­CS) in the In­dus­tri­al Court.

OS­HA ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Car­olyn San­cho yes­ter­day con­firmed that the mat­ter was filed on De­cem­ber 13, two weeks af­ter Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo re­ceived the re­port in­to the Paria/LM­CS tragedy from Com­mis­sion of En­quiry chair­man Jerome KC.

The Pres­i­dent re­ceived the re­port on No­vem­ber 30 and last Fri­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young laid the doc­u­ment in Par­lia­ment.

Among the 52 rec­om­men­da­tions in the re­port were that Paria be charged with cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter, and that there was ev­i­dence to pros­e­cute Paria’s Op­er­a­tions Head Col­in Piper and LM­CS own­er Kaz­im Ali Sr in­di­vid­u­al­ly, and Paria and LM­CS as em­ploy­ers, for of­fences un­der the OSH Act.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia ques­tions on the agency’s re­sponse in the wake of the re­lease of the re­port via What­sApp Mes­sen­ger, San­cho said, “This mat­ter was filed in the In­dus­tri­al Court on De­cem­ber 13 by OS­HA against LM­CS Ltd, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny et al. Where there is a po­ten­tial for sum­ma­ry of­fences we are li­ais­ing with the DPP.”

In their re­port, how­ev­er, the com­mis­sion­ers took note of the time­frame in fil­ing mat­ters be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court.

“At the time of writ­ing this re­port, the OSH Act re­quires that any such pro­ceed­ings be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court must be filed with­in two years of the in­ci­dent be­com­ing known - in oth­er words 24th Feb­ru­ary 2024,” the re­port stat­ed.

San­cho did not want to dis­close fur­ther de­tails re­gard­ing the pend­ing mat­ter be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court, but said the par­ties were aware of the mat­ter.

Not­ing that the re­port has been sent to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard SC, she added, “As you are aware, the Gov­ern­ment has sent mat­ters re­gard­ing the CoE re­port to the DPP, there­fore, we would not want to make any state­ments that may be prej­u­di­cial.”

Fol­low­ing the CoE find­ings on Paria’s con­duct, there have been many calls for Paria ex­ec­u­tives to be fired.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 40 of the re­port stat­ed, “We rec­om­mend to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions that on the ev­i­dence be­fore this tri­bunal we find that there are suf­fi­cient grounds to con­clude that Paria’s neg­li­gence could be char­ac­terised as gross neg­li­gence and con­se­quent­ly crim­i­nal. We do not con­clude that the same is true of LM­CS as we are of the view that they were ef­fec­tive­ly pre­vent­ed from pur­su­ing a res­cue by Paria.”

Rec­om­men­da­tion 41 stat­ed: “That the DPP con­sid­er charg­ing Paria with what is com­mon­ly known as Cor­po­rate Manslaugh­ter.”

Dur­ing sep­a­rate me­dia con­fer­ences yes­ter­day, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice called on the DPP to move swift­ly, as the CoE re­port con­tained all the ev­i­dence.

When con­tact­ed via What­sapp Mes­sen­ger yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, DPP Gas­pard said he could not “say much” on the mat­ter, as he still has to pe­ruse the doc­u­ments.

“I can’t say much yet. I have to read the doc­u­ments first. I in­tend to do so as soon as I can,” he said.

While the CoE com­mis­sion­ers have been com­mend­ed for their com­pre­hen­sive re­port, lone sur­vivor Christo­pher Boodram felt that his for­mer boss, Kaz­im Ali Snr, had suf­fered enough with the loss of his son and should not be pros­e­cut­ed.

LM­CS em­ploy­ees Rishi Na­gas­sar, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry and Christo­pher Boodram were sucked in­to a 30-inch un­der­wa­ter pipeline while they were do­ing main­te­nance work at No 36 Sealine Ris­er on Berth No 6, Pointe-a-Pierre, on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022.

Boodram left his in­jured col­leagues be­hind to get help, and even­tu­al­ly made it to the sur­face some three hours af­ter the in­ci­dent.

Dur­ing the CoE, how­ev­er, it was re­vealed that Paria did not al­low a res­cue mis­sion for the oth­er divers. Fol­low­ing pub­lic out­rage, the CoE was launched and has cost tax­pay­ers $15.5 mil­lion.

At­tempts to con­tact En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and Paria chair­man New­man George yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful but the lat­er has promised to re­lease a state­ment on the re­port this week.