T&T’s lone commercial diving instructor, Dr Glenn Cheddie, says it is time to regulate the diving industry, as divers are being exploited and killed too frequently because they have improper equipment for dangerous underwater jobs.
In an exclusive interview with Guardian Media, Cheddie said too many T&T companies had been flouting international diving standards. He also wants an audit of 12 companies he claimed have been utilising scuba divers to do commercial diving jobs without proper equipment, skills or training.
Cheddie is a retired Association of Diving Contractors International (ADCI) supervisor and a retired offshore supervisor/instructor with the Certified International Marine Contractors Association and Divers Certified Board of Canada.
The ADCI provides international standards for commercial diver training. Cheddie was instrumental in setting up established diving standards in Canada before he moved back to T&T and began training certified commercial divers.
Holding up two commercial diving helmets which are equipped to provide surface air, Cheddie said if the four divers were wearing the proper gear they would still be alive today.
One of the helmets costs over $60,000.
Cheddie said because there is no authority or agency to regulate the diving industry, contractors were taking the cheap way out and sending uncertified scuba divers with scuba gear to do dangerous underwater jobs. He said Paria Fuel Trading Company Limited also had questions to answer for not playing a proactive supervisory role in diving operations.
Showing a copy of the ADCI regulations, Cheddie said: “ADCI, page 8 of the standards, states under Welding and Burning: Underwater welding and burning should be performed only by qualified personnel with prior training in these operations and should only be performed only with surface supply equipment with communication.”
He noted that if the four divers were wearing the helmets with surface air supply and were being sucked into the pipe, all of them would have been held above the surface with tender, umbilical and video lines.
He said he trained Fyzal Kurban and underwater welder Rishi Nagassar, both of whom were commercial divers. However, he said he did not train the other divers, Christopher Boodran, Yusuf Henry and Kazim Ali Jr,
“There are 12 companies using recreational divers as commercial divers. They are telling the client that these certifications are commercial and that is the biggest lie. They are killing these divers. These divers are not trained,” Cheddie said.
He said he had been fighting to get the diving industry regularised but four years ago, the Bureau of Standards stopped doing any audits into diving companies.
“I don’t know why they stopped but as soon as the Bureau of Standards stopped auditing, a lot of companies started popping up throughout Trinidad using untrained, unqualified scuba-divers and sending them into dangerous areas to do commercial diving works,” he said.
“This must stop, or else more divers will die. Each contracting company in this country must be audited. A department must be set up, an auditor must be set up where an expert commercial diving auditor can check the certifications of every diver, check every piece of equipment, inspected and certified, conduct quality assurance, look at all risk assessments before you send a diver down there. Look at the safety procedures.”
Cheddie questioned why the Occupational Safety and Health Authority had not taken a more active role in regulating the industry.
The OSH Agency has publicly said it is doing its own investigation into the diving accident based on the Occupational Safety and Health Act Chapter 88:08, in a bid to determine the cause of the deaths.
The divers had been doing underwater maintenance on an inactive 30-inch diameter pipeline at Berth No 6 when they were sucked in. Their bodies were retrieved days later. A Commission of Enquiry will be launched to expose what transpired.
