KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Paria/LM­CS div­ing tragedy has now pushed the de­liv­ery of its re­port to the State to May.
Dur­ing the Ev­i­den­tial Hear­ings stage in Jan­u­ary, CoE Chair­man Jerome Lynch, KC said he aimed to de­liv­er the re­port by the end of April. Dur­ing last Wednes­day's vis­it to the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny, Pointe-a-Pierre, to view the LM­CS hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber, Lynch ad­mit­ted there were some de­lays due to the late­ness of view­ing the equip­ment and lo­gis­ti­cal is­sues. How­ev­er, he said that to­geth­er with Com­mis­sion­er Gre­go­ry Wil­son, they were play­ing catch up to ful­fil their promised de­liv­ery date.
In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the CoE con­firmed that the in­spec­tion of the hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber was the last ev­i­dence. It has formed pre­lim­i­nary views re­lat­ing to the CoE. How­ev­er, it can­not de­liv­er the re­port un­til May as the law man­dates the CoE to is­sue Salmon let­ters. These let­ters con­tain crit­i­cisms of in­di­vid­u­als and en­ti­ties who may be af­fect­ed by the re­port.
“It is im­por­tant that the re­cip­i­ents of these Salmon let­ters have as much de­tail of the crit­i­cisms as would al­low them to prop­er­ly make rep­re­sen­ta­tions if they so wish for our con­sid­er­a­tion. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, those de­tailed let­ters can­not be ready be­fore Fri­day 28 April 2023. Con­se­quent­ly, our am­bi­tion to have the re­port com­plet­ed by the end of April 2023 can­not be re­alised.”
While the CoE ex­pects to have re­spons­es to those let­ters in a time­ly fash­ion, it said it will not com­plete the re­port un­til May.
“It is to be re­gret­ted that there has been this slip­page, but in the in­ter­est of fair­ness to those who may be crit­i­cised, it is nec­es­sary,” the re­lease stat­ed.
The CoE or­ders that re­cip­i­ents re­ceive Salmon let­ters on or be­fore April 28. Those who wish to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions must sub­mit them in writ­ing by May 12.
The CoE will be ready to hear oral sub­mis­sions af­ter it is­sues “Salmon” let­ters in an in­di­vid­ual in-cam­era hear­ing. Any par­ty, by them­selves or by Coun­sel, who wish­es to make sub­mis­sions must in­di­cate their de­sires to the CoE sec­re­tary by May 5. The CoE will al­lo­cate an in­di­vid­ual time slot to them. A re­cip­i­ent of a Salmon let­ter will not be per­mit­ted to make oral rep­re­sen­ta­tions at an in-cam­era hear­ing of the CoE with­out first pre­sent­ing writ­ten sub­mis­sions. The CoE will con­vene in-cam­era hear­ings on May 15 and 16 at a venue not yet de­cid­ed.
The State ap­point­ed the CoE to probe the trag­ic in­ci­dents, which oc­curred on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, at Paria's Sealine No 32 at Berth No 6 in the Pointe-a-Pierre har­bour. LM­CS divers Christo­pher Boodram, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry and Rishi Na­gas­sar were re­mov­ing an in­flat­able plug in the hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber that af­ter­noon when a Delta P event flood­ed the room and sucked them in­to the 30-inch di­am­e­ter pipeline.
Boodram, who en­tered the pipe last, crawled and swam back to the cham­ber. De­spite con­firm­ing his col­leagues were alive in the pipeline, Ali Jr, Kur­ban, Hen­ry, and Na­gas­sar died while await­ing res­cue. Paria flushed their bod­ies out in the fol­low­ing days.