KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Paria/LM­CS div­ing tragedy rec­om­mends a charge of cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter against the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny for the deaths of four divers in 2022, the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) is call­ing on Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard to con­sid­er charg­ing every­one the re­port finds ac­count­able with crim­i­nal of­fences.

“Lock them up,” OW­TU mem­bers and Vanes­sa Kussie, wid­ow of fall­en div­er Rishi Na­gas­sar, chant­ed with their fore­arms crossed dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the OW­TU’s Para­mount Build­ing head­quar­ters in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day.

Ro­get said there should al­so be ac­tion against those who were re­spon­si­ble for putting safe­ty sys­tems in place, as they cre­at­ed an un­safe work en­vi­ron­ment that marked the divers for death.

“All who were in­volved and iden­ti­fied in the re­port, who were in­volved in the res­cue ef­fort and as a re­sult of their fail­ure, we are now dis­cussing this to­day. We call for hand­cuffs to be placed on all of them and let them make a jail. It is on­ly when peo­ple make jail in this coun­try in this re­gard that em­ploy­ers will be­gin to sit up and take note and do the right things ac­cord­ing to the law,” Ro­get said.

Na­gas­sar, Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry, Kaz­im Ali Jr and Christo­pher Boodram were car­ry­ing out sub­sea main­te­nance of Paria’ Sealine 36 at Berth 6 in the Pointe-a-Pierre har­bour on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, when a Delta P event pulled them in­to the pipeline.

Boodram swam back to a hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber, where res­cue divers pulled him out. De­spite in­form­ing a re­sponse team that his col­leagues were alive in the pipe, Paria pre­vent­ed his LM­CS col­leauges from per­form­ing a res­cue. Paria flushed the divers’ bod­ies from the pipe in the fol­low­ing days.

A com­mis­sion ap­point­ed to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent and make rec­om­men­da­tions found suf­fi­cient grounds to sug­gest DPP Gas­pard con­sid­er pros­e­cu­tion against Paria.

Ro­get yes­ter­day said Paria was not a name or build­ing that made the de­ci­sions that led to the deaths but it was, rather, the In­ci­dent Com­mand Team.

“Paria is peo­ple. It is the peo­ple who are at the top in the man­age­ment of Paria, so when they talk about cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter and crim­i­nal neg­li­gence, the cor­po­rate is not the build­ing or the lo­go. It is the peo­ple. It is peo­ple who per­form in the cor­po­rate.”

The OW­TU boss al­so joined the list of peo­ple call­ing for the re­moval of Paria’s board of di­rec­tors, say­ing it was those mem­bers who over­saw the un­safe op­er­a­tion at the com­pa­ny.

Ro­get said the di­rec­tors were part of the over­all fab­ric of Paria that pre­vent­ed the res­cue. He said chair­man New­man George must leave re­gard­less of whether he has con­nec­tions with high-rank­ing of­fi­cials.

“What we must take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion is that he failed and was part of an un­for­tu­nate de­ba­cle that led to the tak­ing of the lives of these four hu­man be­ings. And so this morn­ing, we want to call specif­i­cal­ly for the re­moval of New­man George. New­man George must go.”

The OW­TU al­so called for the ter­mi­na­tion of Paria’s Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Mush­taq Mo­hammed, Ter­mi­nal Op­er­a­tions Man­ag­er and In­ci­dent Com­man­der Collin Piper and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Lead Ner­is­sa Feveck.

Ro­get said the OW­TU will mon­i­tor to see if the Gov­ern­ment ig­nores cit­i­zens’ calls to re­move those Paria of­fi­cials.

He said the blood of the divers was on the hands of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, de­ceased for­mer Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Franklin Khan and cur­rent En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, for their roles in get­ting the OW­TU out of Petrotrin, from which they re­struc­tured the com­pa­ny to cre­ate Paria.

He said had the OW­TU been rep­re­sent­ing work­ers at Paria, those un­safe prac­tices would not have ex­ist­ed.

“Had there been a union, or more pre­cise­ly, had there been OW­TU in Paria at the time, those four peo­ple would not have been mur­dered, and that is a fact,” he said.

Ro­get claimed the re­port would have been more ex­ten­sive if the au­thor­i­ties had re­moved those re­spon­si­ble for the deaths dur­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tions. He said there is nowhere else in the world where peo­ple would find an en­quiry in­to such an in­ci­dent, and those in­volved re­main on the job.

“That call was sup­port­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, but be­cause of who is friends with whom and close po­lit­i­cal ties and who is friends with the man at the top, every­body kept their jobs. And as they kept their jobs, they in­tim­i­dat­ed a num­ber of wit­ness­es, so valu­able wit­ness­es that should have come for­ward, they were pre­vent­ed. They were in­tim­i­dat­ed. Why? Be­cause they want­ed to have a job the fol­low­ing day, and, so they were forced to not come for­ward.”