Renu­ka Singh

State-owned Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and LM­CS Ltd yes­ter­day both en­gaged in a blame game over the in­ci­dent on Feb­ru­ary 25 in which four divers were killed while work­ing on a pipeline.

LM­CS had been silent since the in­ci­dent but yes­ter­day re­tained for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen and spoke out, call­ing for jus­tice from “those re­spon­si­ble” for the in­ci­dent.

The com­pa­ny al­so said it had paid for pri­vate au­top­sies of the divers.

The south-based dive com­pa­ny, which is at the cen­tre of the un­der­wa­ter ac­ci­dent at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing that claimed four of its divers- Yusuf Hen­ry, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Fyzal Kur­ban and Rishi Nages­sar -, al­so made it clear it will be con­duct­ing its own in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the fa­tal mat­ter and will be hir­ing pri­vate in­ter­na­tion­al in­ves­ti­ga­tors to do so.

The com­pa­ny blamed Paria and the T&T Coast Guard for pre­vent­ing the res­cue of the men.

“We not on­ly had the man­pow­er and per­son­nel to car­ry out their res­cue, but we pro­vid­ed Paria with the method­ol­o­gy to ex­e­cute the res­cue,” the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment.

The com­pa­ny, which is run Kaz­im Ali Jr’s fa­ther, Kaz­im Ali, main­tained that it was pre­vent­ed from those res­cue op­er­a­tions by Paria and its agents.

“At all ma­te­r­i­al times, we were pre­vent­ed from ex­e­cut­ing this res­cue by Paria and the T&T Coast Guard,” it said.

The com­pa­ny said when they “lost con­tact” with the four men, “our sin­gu­lar aim was the res­cue of our em­ploy­ees.”

“We were not giv­en a chance to save the lives of our em­ploy­ees,” LM­CS said.

LM­CS said it was the de­ci­sions tak­en by Paria and the T&T Coast Guard that ef­fec­tive­ly pre­vent­ed them from at­tempt­ing the res­cue plan for the dis­tressed divers.

“Those who made those de­ci­sions must be held ac­count­able for them and must jus­ti­fy those de­ci­sions, not on­ly to the fam­i­lies but to the pub­lic and to the au­thor­i­ties that are re­spon­si­ble for the en­force­ment of the law,” LM­CS said.

On Fri­day 25, LM­CS divers Yusuf Hen­ry, Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Nages­sar and Kaz­im Ali Jr were work­ing to re­place nuts at Berth 6 at the Paria’s off­shore fa­cil­i­ty in Pointe-a-Pierre when a suc­tion de­vel­oped and the men were pulled in­to the 30-inch pipeline. The res­cue div­er, Christo­pher Boodram, was al­so trapped but was res­cued by Michael Kur­ban, who is al­so at­tached to LM­CS.

Kur­ban, in sub­se­quent re­ports, main­tained that he want­ed to dive for the oth­er four men, one of whom was his fa­ther but was pre­vent­ed from do­ing so.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has since in­di­cat­ed an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion will be con­duct­ed in­to the in­ci­dent by a five-mem­ber team led by at­tor­ney Shiv Shar­ma. The pan­el is al­so ex­pect­ed to in­clude in­de­pen­dent ex­perts from Shell and BP and has 40 days to com­plete its probe.

LM­CS yes­ter­day called for jus­tice for the men.

“Those who were re­spon­si­ble for this tragedy that led to the death of our em­ploy­ees and the se­ri­ous in­juries to Mr Boodram must be held ac­count­able for their ac­tions or lack there­of,” the re­lease said.

“To this end, the LM­CS has re­tained, at its own cost, the ser­vices of a spe­cial­ist pathol­o­gist to un­der­take pri­vate au­top­sies for all the de­ceased.

“In ad­di­tion, since the in­ci­dent, LM­CS has been in the process of gath­er­ing all of the rel­e­vant ev­i­dence in or­der to pro­vide in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts who are be­ing re­tained by LM­CS to de­ter­mine the cause of this na­tion­al dis­as­ter and as­cer­tain who was re­spon­si­ble for the deaths of our em­ploy­ees or the de­ci­sions that led to their deaths.”

It added, “The im­pact of this in­ci­dent on our LM­CS staff has been dev­as­tat­ing.”

The re­lease said the com­pa­ny has fa­cil­i­tat­ed coun­selling ser­vices to the de­ceased men’s fam­i­lies, lone sur­vivor Christo­pher Boodram and the rest of the com­pa­ny’s em­ploy­ees and has al­so paid for the fu­ner­al ser­vices of Hen­ry, Kur­ban and Nages­sar.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Young about the com­pa­ny’s claims and its de­ci­sion to re­tain its own pri­vate in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tors and pay for pri­vate au­top­sies but there was no re­sponse.

How­ev­er, Paria re­spond­ed to LM­CS’ claims hours lat­er, say­ing that a lot of the in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main was “in­ac­cu­rate and al­so un­just.”