When the new di­rec­tors of Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny are ap­point­ed, one of the first things they would have to con­sid­er is the State com­pa­ny’s po­si­tion on a se­ries of charges un­der the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (OSH) Act re­lat­ed to a 2022 tragedy that claimed the lives of four divers. 

As the case came up for hear­ing be­fore act­ing Deputy Chief Mag­is­trate Bri­an Dabideen, yes­ter­day morn­ing, Paria’s lawyer Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, re­quest­ed time to seek the po­si­tion of the com­pa­ny’s in­com­ing board of di­rec­tors, which is ex­pect­ed to be ap­point­ed fol­low­ing last week’s gen­er­al elec­tion. 

Pe­ter­son said, “Your wor­ship is aware of an event that took place last Mon­day, and be­cause it’s a State en­ti­ty I think it prop­er to com­mu­ni­cate with a new board.” 

Mag­is­trate Dabideen agreed as he gave the com­pa­ny two months to com­mu­ni­cate its po­si­tion and file its de­fence. He ad­journed the case to Oc­to­ber 9. 

Dur­ing the hear­ing, at­tor­ney Richard Ma­son, who rep­re­sent­ed the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty and Agency (OS­HA), in­di­cat­ed that his client had al­ready dis­closed all ev­i­dence in the case ex­cept a video record­ing. 

Stat­ing his client had some tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ty with the video dis­clo­sure, which has since been rec­ti­fied, Ma­son as­sured the court that the re­main­ing dis­clo­sure would take place be­fore a pre­vi­ous­ly set dead­line for do­ing so. 

On Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (LM­CS) divers Christo­pher Boodram, Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Yusuf Hen­ry, and Ali’s son Kaz­im Jr, were sucked in­to the 30-inch-di­am­e­ter pipeline they were per­form­ing main­te­nance work on at Paria’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty. 

All were se­ri­ous­ly in­jured but Boodram man­aged to make his way to the en­trance of the pipeline and was res­cued.

LM­CS of­fi­cials were blocked from at­tempt­ing to res­cue their col­leagues. Three of the divers’ bod­ies were re­cov­ered on Feb­ru­ary 28, while Na­gas­sar’s was re­cov­ered the fol­low­ing day. 

Cab­i­net ini­tial­ly ap­point­ed a five-mem­ber team to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent but even­tu­al­ly ap­point­ed a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) due to pub­lic crit­i­cism. 

In its re­port, the com­mis­sion, chaired by King’s Coun­sel Jerome Lynch, pre­sent­ed sev­er­al dozen rec­om­men­da­tions in­clud­ing charges un­der the OSH Act. 

Last Sep­tem­ber, Paria’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Mush­taq Mo­hammed, its ter­mi­nal op­er­a­tions man­ag­er Collin Piper, LM­CS di­rec­tor Kaz­im Ali Snr, and the com­pa­nies plead­ed not guilty to the charges as they made their sec­ond court ap­pear­ance. 

In Oc­to­ber, Boodram and Na­gas­sar’s fam­i­ly filed neg­li­gence law­suits against Paria and LM­CS. 

Kur­ban and Hen­ry’s fam­i­lies were ex­pect­ed to do the same. 

In ear­ly April, for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced that the Cab­i­net had de­cid­ed to make a one-time ex-gra­tia pay­ment of $1 mil­lion each to Boodram and his col­leagues’ fam­i­lies with­out ad­mit­ting li­a­bil­i­ty. 

He claimed that the de­lay in the set­tle­ment of the cas­es was due to in­sur­ers for LM­CS and Paria dis­agree­ing on which com­pa­ny was li­able. 

While speak­ing to re­porters at the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny for her Cab­i­net on Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie were asked about the pay­ments.

Je­re­mie said that he would have to en­quire whether the pay­ments had al­ready been made and as­sured that the com­mit­ment would be ho­n­oured.