“It doesn’t wow me a bit,” said Nicole Greenidge, the mother of deceased diver Yusuf Henry, shortly after Prime Minister Stuart Young’s announcement of a $1 million ex-gratia payment to families of the four deceased Land and Marine Contracting Services Ltd (LMCS) divers involved in the Paria Diving Tragedy and the lone survivor Christopher Boodram.
In an interview with Guardian Media hours after Young’s announcement, Greenidge questioned the timing of the payment, saying she believed they were motivated by the upcoming general election.
“I have mixed emotions to be honest, because after three years, so much time have gone. I think that statement is really coming out now because the election is in the air. To be honest, I don’t even know how to feel about it because we have been getting by for three years,” Greenidge said.
However, in making the announcement at the post-Cabinet media conference at Whitehall yesterday, Young said the offer was not politically motivated.
He said, “I can’t change that perception of people. And I can understand the cynicism by persons who hold that point of view. I know that the facts relate that I was extremely frustrated, personally, because I’ve been asking for this to be done even before we came into 2025.”
Saying she didn’t know how the Prime Minister expects the families to react, Greenidge said, “It doesn’t wow me a bit. I am not excited by the news or anything like that because after three years they now deciding. I think that statement only made because of the politics in the air right now, because of the election.”
On February 25, 2022, LMCS workers Boodram, Kazim Ali Jnr, Yusuf Henry, Rishi Nagassar, Fyzal Kurban, were sucked into a 36-inch pipeline while doing repairs at Paria Fuel’s Pointe-a-Pierre facility when they were sucked into it. Boodram managed to swim out and when he got to the surface, pleaded with those present to assist his colleagues, who were still alive, but injured, in the pipeline. However, Paria was accused of preventing rescue efforts.
Meanwhile, Kazim Ali Snr, the father of Kazim Ali Jnr, said he was “very happy” by the Prime Minister’s statement because the families had “suffered long enough.”
While Ali felt the payment was in no way sufficient, he acknowledged it was an ex-gratia payment and that “the battle for compensation is still going to be in the courts.”
Ali Snr, the owner of LMCS, also said he believed Young was pressured into offering the payment to the families. Noting that United National Congress (UNC) Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar had also promised compensation to the divers if she is elected and has raised it many times during her election campaign, he said, “I think he was pushed into a comer where he had to make an offer of something to keep the fire down.”
When Guardian Media visited the Claxton Bay home of Boodram, he said he was experiencing “a lot of emotions” and would speak on the matter when he “calms down.”
However, speaking on February 22 in front Heritage Petroleum’s administrative building in Pointe-a-Pierre, in commemoration of the third anniversary of the incident, Boodram had pledged his support to the UNC and called on the public to vote against the People’s National Movement (PNM) and Young.
