KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Land and Ma­rine Con­struc­tion Ser­vices (LM­CS) man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Kaz­im Ali Snr has doubts over the process and fi­nal re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Paria/LM­CS div­ing tragedy, ques­tion­ing the ev­i­dence giv­en by some wit­ness­es.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the tele­phone on Thurs­day, Ali Snr, whose son Kaz­im Ali Jr per­ished in the in­ci­dent, said he was in­ter­est­ed in the CoE find­ings.

“I have my doubts be­cause I do not see how it could be hon­est if the main play­ers in Paria were kept in their jobs. I do not see how peo­ple could give their ev­i­dence freely if I knew that those peo­ple were still in their jobs,” Ali Snr said.

Ali Snr re­called two ques­tions to Chair­man Jerome Lynch, KC dur­ing Wednes­day’s fi­nal sit­ting on why the CoE did not call for­mer Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um CEO Ar­lene Chow and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Stu­art Young to the ev­i­den­tial hear­ings.

He said Lynch dodged the ques­tion, say­ing Chow en­tered the event, but he has ev­i­dence that she was there from 5.30 pm.

“If you look at What­sApp that was in the com­mis­sion from Ar­lene Chow and Walk­er, from 5.30 pm, they were in­volved. They were more or less in­struct­ing Piper what to do.”

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Paria chair­man New­man George, he was in a board meet­ing and could not speak. Asked if he would com­ment lat­er, he said, “I do not know what is in the re­port, so I can­not give any state­ment.”

Last year, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley or­dered a CoE in­to the trag­ic in­ci­dents when LM­CS divers Ali Jr, Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Christo­pher Boodram were ex­e­cut­ing main­te­nance work on Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny’s Sealine 36 at Berth No 6 in the Pointe-a-Pierre har­bour on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022.

The divers were in­side a hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber when they re­moved an in­flat­able plug from the 30-inch di­am­e­ter line that trig­gered a Delta P event, which sucked them in. Boodram crawled and swam back to the top of the line, where res­cue divers pulled him out. How­ev­er, the oth­ers re­mained in the line af­ter Paria pro­hib­it­ed fur­ther res­cue at­tempts and changed their re­sponse from a search and res­cue to a re­cov­ery.

With­in days, Paria flushed the re­main­ing divers’ bod­ies out of the line.

Dur­ing Wednes­day’s sit­ting, Lynch an­nounced that the re­port was com­plete and ready to be sub­mit­ted to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo yes­ter­day.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions ad­vis­er to Kan­ga­loo, Cheryl Lala, con­firmed that Lynch and Com­mis­sion­er Gre­go­ry Wil­son vis­it­ed the Pres­i­dent’s House yes­ter­day at 10.30 am and hand­ed over the doc­u­ment. How­ev­er, Lala could not say when Kan­ga­loo would for­ward the re­port to the Gov­ern­ment. 
Re­spond­ing to the fi­nal hear­ing, Ali Snr said they lost 21 months await­ing the re­port.

He said he would not like the is­sue to drag on longer as there was noth­ing much he could do un­til the re­port be­came pub­lic.

“Every­body has been hold­ing their hands pend­ing un­til they pub­lish it. So yes­ter­day was not re­al­ly a big thing, I mean, be­cause un­less the re­port is not made pub­lic, he might as well keep it to him­self.”
Ali Snr said most peo­ple were on­ly now aware that the Gov­ern­ment has the au­thor­i­ty to pub­li­cise or keep the re­port pri­vate. He re­mind­ed peo­ple that the Cli­co en­quiry re­port was not pub­lic. 

“I hope they do, but I do not know what will come of it.”
Ali Snr said the fi­nal sit­ting was a waste of time, and Lynch could have just giv­en the re­port to the Pres­i­dent and tak­en a pho­to­graph.

Wid­ow: Who­ev­er is re­spon­si­ble should be held ac­count­able

One of the dead divers, Rishi Na­gas­sar’s wid­ow, Vanes­sa Kussie, said al­though the fam­i­lies con­tent­ed to give the CoE more time to pro­duce the re­port, they did not ex­pect it to take so long. How­ev­er, she was hap­py that it was com­plete.

Kussie hopes Kan­ga­loo does the right thing and the pub­lic keeps abreast of the de­vel­op­ment. She and the oth­er fam­i­lies want a per­son­al copy.

“Well, in my view, I per­son­al­ly do not think that the fam­i­ly should be left out of be­ing giv­en a copy be­cause it is our hus­bands who died there,” Kussie said.

She said no one checked the fam­i­lies for the past 21 months to see how they lived as far as the Gov­ern­ment and Paria were con­cerned. 

“You know, I had to do bar­be­cue and pholourie sales and all these oth­er things to do fundrais­ing to do stuff be­fore, and it was a big strug­gle. It is still a big strug­gle.”

Kussie said she felt com­fort in some of Lynch’s re­spons­es dur­ing the fi­nal sit­ting, in­clud­ing when he wished he could gift her a copy of the re­port and said that the divers’ deaths were not an ac­ci­dent. She be­lieves that based on what Lynch said, he felt there should have been a bet­ter re­sponse to their dis­tress.

Kussie said the fam­i­lies must get jus­tice for the divers and be­lieves Lynch’s re­marks point to li­a­bil­i­ty for Paria.
“We need jus­tice for our divers, and who­ev­er is re­spon­si­ble should be held ac­count­able.”