Renu­ka Singh

Jus­tice Den­nis Mor­ri­son QC is ex­pect­ed in the coun­try on April 18 to be sworn in to be­gin the work of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the deaths of four divers at the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd back in Feb­ru­ary.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced this at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s.

Ear­li­er yes­ter­day, le­gal coun­sel to the CoE, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj SC, had said he was wait­ing on Cab­i­net to set the terms of ref­er­ence for the CoE.

“That will be done in ad­vance of Mr Mor­ri­son be­ing here be­cause we are the ones who must de­ter­mine what it is that they are look­ing in­to,” Young said.

“There is noth­ing that is out­side of the pa­ra­me­ters of what we al­ready an­nounced,” Young said.

Young de­fend­ed the time frame by which the State set up this CoE and sought to “put it in con­text” as a re­but­tal to Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who had crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s slow pace on this mat­ter. He ref­er­enced the time­lines of two for­mer Co­Es, one of which was con­duct­ed un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment in 2010 to show that set­ting up a CoE took them some time too.

He said that Per­sad-Bisses­sar kept “town cry­ing” for a CoE.

“As you would be aware, Com­mis­sions of En­quiry do take some time,” Young said.

He ref­er­enced the Cole­man CoE in­to the fail­ures of the Hin­du Cred­it Union, CL Fi­nan­cial and CLI­CO and said that while the de­ci­sion was tak­en to set it up in Sep­tem­ber, noth­ing hap­pened un­til months lat­er. He said that this cur­rent CoE, how­ev­er, has been set up in a much short­er time frame.

On the af­ter­noon of Feb­ru­ary 25, four divers—Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Kaz­im Ali Jr—died while work­ing on the Berth 6 pipeline at Paria Fu­el’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty. Af­ter three days, Paria an­nounced the deaths of the divers and said that the res­cue mis­sion had be­come a re­cov­ery one.

Since then, sev­er­al quar­ters have crit­i­cised both the com­pa­ny and the State for mis­han­dling the in­ci­dent and the fam­i­lies of the divers.

Yes­ter­day, Young could not give a dead­line or bud­get for the com­ple­tion of this CoE.

“It is very dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine, so in speak­ing with the head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice last week, he is work­ing on look­ing at the his­tor­i­cal costs of past com­mis­sions, so he’s go­ing to work up an ini­tial bud­get to try to keep it with­in that bud­get,” he said.

“But I have learnt, it is im­pos­si­ble to pre­dict how a CoE will go.”

Scope of CoE

Young said it is pro­posed that the com­mis­sion will ex­am­ine and en­quire in­to the fol­low­ing, amongst oth­er things:

1. The scope of works is­sued by Paria for the ex­er­cise

2. As­cer­tain the pro­pos­als and plans sub­mit­ted by LM­CS Lim­it­ed to con­duct the works at the ma­te­r­i­al site

3. Ex­am­ine gen­er­al­ly the pol­i­cy, pro­ce­dures, prac­tices, con­duct re­lat­ing to the em­ploy­ees and or­gan­ised labour for these types of main­te­nance ex­er­cis­es for Paria and for oth­er com­pa­nies like­wise

4. Iden­ti­fy the pre­cise facts and cir­cum­stances which led up to and re­sult­ed in the loss of life and whether this was rea­son­able and jus­ti­fi­able in the par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stances

5. Ex­am­ine all of the de­ci­sions and ac­tions tak­en af­ter it be­came clear that the five LM­CS Ltd divers went miss­ing

6. In­ves­ti­gate the na­ture, ex­tent and ap­pli­ca­tion of any stand­ing or­ders, pol­i­cy con­sid­er­a­tions, leg­is­la­tion or oth­er in­struc­tions in deal­ing with the sit­u­a­tion which gave rise to this in­ci­dent

7. Iden­ti­fy whether Paria and LM­CS em­ployed suf­fi­cient safe­guards and mea­sures to en­sure the safe­ty of its con­tract­ed em­ploy­ees, prop­er­ty and the pre­ven­tion of the in­ci­dent

8. De­ter­mine the ad­e­qua­cy and me­chan­i­cal in­tegri­ty of the equip­ment utilised by LM­CS

9. De­ter­mine the ad­e­qua­cy of LM­CS plans utilised for the op­er­a­tion;

10. Iden­ti­fy whether by act or omis­sion, any iden­ti­fied or uniden­ti­fied par­ty di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly caused loss of life

11. Ex­am­ine the role played by Paria and LM­CS through their re­spec­tive units in­di­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly in deal­ing with the in­ci­dent

12. Ex­am­ine all oth­er ma­te­r­i­al cir­cum­stances lead­ing up to and sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent that took place on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, that led to the trag­ic deaths of the four LM­CS divers, con­tin­u­ing up to the re­cov­ery of their bod­ies.