Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

For Can­da­cy Phillip, the wife of de­ceased rig work­er Pe­te Phillip, there will be no cel­e­bra­tion on Moth­er’s Day to­mor­row.

While her five chil­dren bring her joy, the weight of loss is heavy, as her hus­band’s body still lies un­re­cov­ered in the sea, al­most five months af­ter Well Ser­vices Rig 110 col­lapsed and plunged him in­to the wa­ter.

Can­da­cy said while the com­pa­ny had been pro­vid­ing sup­port to her and their five chil­dren, the ab­sence of clo­sure con­tin­ued to be emo­tion­al­ly dif­fi­cult for the fam­i­ly.

On March 7, Well Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny stat­ed that re­cov­ery ef­forts had been de­layed due to strict in­sur­ance and con­trac­tor re­quire­ments.

Can­da­cy said last Thurs­day that they con­firmed in­sur­ance un­der­writ­ers had ap­proved the set­tle­ment and re­lease agree­ment. How­ev­er, she said no date had been giv­en for when op­er­a­tions to re­trieve her hus­band’s re­mains would restart.

Mean­while, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, in a What­sApp mes­sage, stat­ed that he in­tend­ed to con­tact the com­pa­ny for an up­date on this mat­ter, but he did not in­di­cate how soon. 

Wel­com­ing any as­sis­tance to get clo­sure, she said, “That will be nice to get some clo­sure at last for me and the fam­i­ly be­cause every­body is hurt­ing.”

Since the in­ci­dent, she said, there had been so many spe­cial fam­i­ly mo­ments that her hus­band would have been in­volved in, in­clud­ing the birth of their fifth child, Jevon Pe­te Phillip, on Feb­ru­ary 23, and their two oth­er sons writ­ing the Sec­ondary En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion. Phillip has an­oth­er son from a pre­vi­ous re­la­tion­ship who is writ­ing the CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions.

She said Moth­er’s Day would be dif­fi­cult, but as her chil­dren’s on­ly par­ent, she knew that she had to be strong for them.

“He miss every­thing. Moth­er’s Day com­ing up, no cel­e­bra­tion. Moth­er’s Day usu­al­ly we will go the beach. Some­times he will buy gifts, clothes. Some­times we go din­ner.”

How­ev­er, she was thank­ful that she would be sur­round­ed by her chil­dren.

She said the com­pa­ny had been as­sist­ing her fi­nan­cial­ly and would be as­sist­ing in ren­o­vat­ing her home, which her hus­band had planned to do.

Phillip was among 75 per­son­nel aboard Well Ser­vices Rig 110 in Her­itage Off­shore East Field on De­cem­ber 22, when, around 3.09 am, it par­tial­ly col­lapsed. Phillip was un­ac­count­ed for while one per­son was in­jured. On De­cem­ber 26, Well Ser­vices is­sued an up­date stat­ing that ef­forts have been tran­si­tioned from search and res­cue op­er­a­tions to a search and re­cov­ery phase.