AM­BI­KA JA­GAS­SARS­INGH

“Sav­ing the dol­lar at the cost of sav­ing lives.”

This is how LM­CS at­tor­ney, Kami­ni Per­saud-Maraj, de­scribed the ac­tions of Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed in award­ing a con­tract to LM­CS with­out hir­ing an in­de­pen­dent project man­ag­er.

Per­saud-Maraj was de­liv­er­ing her clos­ing state­ment to the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry set up to in­ves­ti­gate the trag­ic ac­ci­dent which led to the deaths of four LM­CS divers, Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Yusuf Hen­ry and Kaz­im Ali Ju­nior, on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022.

She said in high-risk jobs, such as the one out­lined in the con­tract be­tween Paria and LM­CS, a project man­ag­er is need­ed.

Chair­man to the Com­mis­sion, King's Coun­sel Jerome Lynch, ques­tioned whether Per­saud-Maraj thought the tool­box meet­ing con­duct­ed, “fell woe­ful­ly short in what it should have con­tained” on the day of the ac­ci­dent.

She agreed, say­ing:

“The late Kaz­im Ali Jr., who would have been the per­son dis­cussing the method state­ment and the work to be done with­in the cham­ber on that day, failed to record the scope of what was spo­ken, as was his job.”

Ear­li­er in her clos­ing state­ment, the LM­CS at­tor­ney ar­gued there was no ex­pec­ta­tion for LM­CS to pro­vide ex­per­tise or ad­vice on the job in Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny’s Scope of works.

She says the con­tract was award­ed to LM­CS for spe­cial­ist ser­vices and equip­ment and not for "ex­pert ad­vice", as pur­port­ed by Paria dur­ing the Com­mis­sion. 

Per­saud-Maraj said Paria's ar­gu­ment that the com­pa­ny re­quired LM­CS’ ex­pert ad­vice and ex­per­tise to con­duct work on Berth 6, as­sess­ing all the risks pos­si­ble with­out be­ing re­spon­si­ble them­selves for it, was not an ac­cu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the con­trac­tu­al agree­ment.

The at­tor­ney al­so ar­gued that it was Paria’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that they hired an ex­pert con­sul­tant, to ob­tain an in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ment of the risks of the job.