LM­CS Lim­it­ed, the com­pa­ny with which the five divers who were in­volved in the trag­ic ac­ci­dent at a Paria Fu­el Trad­ing off­shore plat­form, has is­sued a state­ment on the is­sue, call­ing for a full ac­count­abil­i­ty on the part of those ul­ti­mate­ly re­spon­si­ble for the death of four of the divers.

The com­pa­ny’s state­ment, is­sued by its at­tor­ney, Ger­ald Ramdeen, al­so in­di­cates that LM­CS has been work­ing to pro­vide all nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the tragedy, in ad­di­tion to pro­vid­ing sup­port to the af­fect­ed fam­i­lies.

“We must de­mand that those who are re­spon­si­ble for the deaths of Yusuf, Fyzal, Rishi and Kaz­im Jr are held to ac­count for their in­ac­tions and ac­tions,” the com­pa­ny says in the state­ment.

LM­CS al­so states in the re­lease that a tragedy of this na­ture must nev­er hap­pen again:

“In the in­ter­est and hon­or of those who lost their lives, we must de­mand that steps are tak­en to en­sure that a dis­as­ter of this na­ture nev­er re­peats it­self; where there are short com­ings, they must be reme­died.”

The full text of the LM­CS state­ment, fol­lows…

On Fri­day 25th Feb­ru­ary 2022, tragedy struck on the No. 36 Sea Line Ris­er on Berth No. 6 at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, Pointe-a-Pierre. At the time, LM­CS Lim­it­ed was ex­e­cut­ing work it was con­tract­ed to per­form by Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.  This hor­rif­ic in­ci­dent led to the death of four of our ded­i­cat­ed em­ploy­ees, Yusuf Hen­ry, Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Kaz­im Je­re­mi­ah Ali, the on­ly son of our man­ag­ing di­rec­tor. A fifth em­ploy­ee, Christo­pher Boodram, sur­vived but suf­fered se­vere in­juries. 

LM­CS has been con­cen­trat­ing its ef­forts on com­fort­ing the fam­i­lies who lost their loved ones and pro­vid­ing sup­port to them dur­ing this pe­ri­od of unimag­in­able grief. The im­pact of this in­ci­dent on our LM­CS staff has been dev­as­tat­ing. LM­CS has made avail­able to all mem­bers of the de­ceased fam­i­lies, as well as Mr. Boodram, pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices to ad­dress their state of mind and the an­guish that has been vis­it­ed up­on them as a re­sult of this in­ci­dent. These ser­vices have al­so been made avail­able to all of our em­ploy­ees. LM­CS has un­der­tak­en to cov­er the bur­ial costs for Yusuf Hen­ry, Fyzal Kur­ban and Rishi Na­gas­sar.

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 pub­lic in­ter­est re­quires no less. The fam­i­lies who lost their loved ones de­serve no less. LM­CS will be sat­is­fied with no less. To this end LM­CS has re­tained, at its own cost, the ser­vices of a spe­cial­ist pathol­o­gist to un­der­take pri­vate au­top­sies for all of the de­ceased. 

In ad­di­tion, since this 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 to as­cer­tain who was re­spon­si­ble for the deaths of our em­ploy­ees or the de­ci­sions that led to their deaths. 

From the time that LM­CS was made aware of the loss of con­tact with our divers on the 25th Feb­ru­ary 2022, our sin­gu­lar aim was the res­cue of our em­ploy­ees. We not on­ly had the man­pow­er and per­son­nel to car­ry out their res­cue, but we pro­vid­ed Paria with the method­ol­o­gy to ex­e­cute the res­cue. At all ma­te­r­i­al times we were pre­vent­ed from ex­e­cut­ing this res­cue by Paria and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard. We were not giv­en the chance to save the lives of our em­ploy­ees.  The ef­fect of those de­ci­sions pre­vent­ed us from at­tempt­ing to res­cue our em­ploy­ees and 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 ex­press­es grat­i­tude and ap­pre­ci­a­tion to our em­ploy­ees who have been a tow­er of strength dur­ing this tragedy. LM­CS wish­es to ex­press heart­felt thanks to every sin­gle mem­ber of the pub­lic who of­fered their sup­port and prayers dur­ing this pe­ri­od of time. In the in­ter­est and hon­or of those who lost their lives, we must de­mand that steps are tak­en to en­sure that a dis­as­ter of this na­ture nev­er re­peats it­self; where there are short com­ings, they must be reme­died. We must de­mand that those who are re­spon­si­ble for the deaths of Yusuf, Fyzal, Rishi and Kaz­im Jr are held to ac­count for their in­ac­tions and ac­tions.