Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Siew Na­gasar, 84, the fa­ther of one of the divers killed in the Paria tragedy, died be­liev­ing he might nev­er get jus­tice for his son.

The fa­ther of 17, who died last Sun­day af­ter ail­ing for some time, was the fa­ther of Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices (LM­CS) div­er Rishi Na­gasar.

Rishi Na­gasar amd four oth­er LM­CS divers, Christo­pher Boodram, Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry and Kaz­im Ali Jr, were sucked in­to a 30-inch di­am­e­ter pipeline on which they were per­form­ing main­te­nance work at Paria’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022. Boodram was the on­ly sur­vivor.

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

Of­fi­cials of Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and LM­CS have de­nied 15 charges un­der the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (OSH) Act, re­lat­ing to the in­ci­dent, and the fam­i­lies are pur­su­ing le­gal ac­tion.

One of Na­gasar's grand­daugh­ters, Na­dia, told Guardian Me­dia he was a qui­et man and had griev­ed silent­ly for Rishi and his oth­er son who died months apart.

"Grief is like stress. You can't mea­sure that, you don't know the depth of that but he used to take it on, you could see it on him," she said

She said her grand­fa­ther didn't talk about the in­ci­dent all the time, but his fa­cial ex­pres­sion would change when­ev­er it came up.

"You will see it in his face, his body ex­pres­sion If you talk about it (in­ci­dent) he might go in­side and cry and grieve," she said

"He know he wouldn't get the jus­tice, he die with that. They could pro­long this mat­ter. They could do what­ev­er they want to do. The bot­tom line and ques­tion we will all ask is, 'Are we go­ing to get the truth? Are we go­ing to get jus­tice?' "

Na­gasar's wid­ow Vanes­sa Kussie said the el­der Na­gasae was dis­traught fol­low­ing his son's death.

"When he come to the fu­ner­al and the wake he was like, 'Look they take my son,' and he was telling the MPs there, 'They take away our son and look how they treat­ing us.' We need to get jus­tice and he was beg­ging and cry­ing for them to help him," she re­called

Kussie said she took com­fort in know­ing that he was in a bet­ter place and no longer suf­fer­ing.

"It's re­al­ly sad see­ing that he died and know­ing that he did not see jus­tice for his son Rishi. How many more will die not see­ing jus­tice? Not on Rishi's side alone, but the rest of the fam­i­ly. We need jus­tice for our­selves and for our chil­dren," she said.