The Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (OSH) Agency says it nev­er ad­vised or sup­port­ed Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed ex­ec­u­tives' move to abort a res­cue mis­sion to save four divers who were sucked in­to No 36 sealine on Feb­ru­ary 25. The men's bod­ies were re­trieved from the pipeline days lat­er.

On Sat­ur­day OS­HA's Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Out­reach Man­ag­er Kendall Reid stat­ed that claims OS­HA was in­volved in this de­ci­sion were "dam­ag­ing to the rep­u­ta­tion of the agency."

Reid ex­plained: "OS­HA is a law en­force­ment body whose ju­ris­dic­tion is to de­ter­mine whether em­ploy­ers, oc­cu­piers and em­ploy­ees com­ply with the OSH Act. As such, the agency does not be­come in­volved in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process of any or­gan­i­sa­tion nor do we di­rect any OSH-re­lat­ed op­er­a­tion.

"On 25 Feb­ru­ary 2022, OS­HA re­ceived no­ti­fi­ca­tion of the ac­ci­dent and the Chief In­spec­tor and his team vis­it­ed the scene. How­ev­er, our team did not form part of Paria’s emer­gency re­sponse team nor did we be­come in­volved in the de­ci­sions re­gard­ing the res­cue op­er­a­tion."

On March 7 in a press re­lease, Paria de­fend­ed its de­ci­sion to abort the mis­sion say­ing: "It was de­ter­mined by Paria–and sup­port­ed by the Coast Guard, the OSH Agency, and ex­ter­nal ex­perts–that it was too dan­ger­ous for any­one to pro­ceed fur­ther in­to the pipeline with­out pos­ing a sig­nif­i­cant risk to life."

Three days lat­er Paria amend­ed the re­lease on its web­site omit­ting OS­HA. How­ev­er, no re­trac­tion was sent to the me­dia in­di­cat­ing the rea­son for the omis­sion.

The agency, which is un­der­tak­ing an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion, said it will hand over ev­i­dence it col­lects in­to the deaths of Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry, Kaz­im Ali Jr and Rishi Na­gas­sar to the po­lice.

Paria's Berth No 6 offshore platform at Pointe-a-Pierre where five divers were sucked into a 30-inch diameter pipeline last month.

'Po­lice will be alert­ed if need­ed'

Reid al­so said the OSH Au­thor­i­ty and Agency "is the pub­lic au­thor­i­ty vest­ed with pow­ers to in­spect, in­ves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute where nec­es­sary OSH-re­lat­ed ac­ci­dents."

He said de­spite the ju­ris­dic­tion of any oth­er pub­lic au­thor­i­ty, OS­HA has ini­ti­at­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions which in­clude "tak­ing wit­ness state­ments, re­ceiv­ing re­ports from rel­e­vant par­ties and ex­am­in­ing ev­i­dence."

"Af­ter this process, a de­ter­mi­na­tion will be made as to whether there have been any breach­es of the OSH Act and by whom and the course of ac­tion to be tak­en. On com­ple­tion of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, OS­HA can pro­vide a sum­ma­ry of its find­ings. If there are mat­ters that should be drawn to the at­ten­tion of the TT Po­lice Ser­vice the agency will do so," Reid said.

Asked whether the agency had the au­thor­i­ty to stop the ex­ploita­tion with­in the div­ing in­dus­try and if they were work­ing in sync with the T&T Bu­reau of Stan­dards (TTBS), Reid said: "There is cur­rent­ly a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­tween the OSH Agency and the TTBS which pro­vides for co­op­er­a­tion in spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances."

While the OSH Agency re­sponds to breach­es of the OSH Act, Reid said its pow­ers were lim­it­ed.

"OS­HA is a law en­force­ment body, and our role is de­fined by the OSH Act. There­fore what we can do to en­sure that an­oth­er tragedy does not oc­cur is lim­it­ed by the pow­ers con­ferred on the agency. Our pri­ma­ry strat­e­gy to pre­vent ac­ci­dents can be bro­ken down in­to three parts: The pro­vi­sion of an in­for­ma­tion and ad­vi­so­ry ser­vice; the con­duct­ing of in­spec­tions, in­ves­ti­ga­tions; and en­force­ment ac­tiv­i­ties and pros­e­cu­tion," Reid said.

Con­cern­ing al­le­ga­tions by com­mer­cial div­ing in­struc­tor Dr Glenn Ched­die that 12 com­pa­nies were op­er­at­ing against in­ter­na­tion­al div­ing stan­dards, Reid called on the pub­lic to re­port breach­es.

"The OSH Agency stands ready to in­ves­ti­gate any breach­es of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act Chap. 88:08 (OSH Act) which is our statu­to­ry man­date. How­ev­er, if Dr Ched­die or any­one pos­sess­es in­for­ma­tion that sug­gests com­pa­nies are not ful­fill­ing their du­ties as out­lined in the OSH Act, then we in­vite them to make a re­port and we will con­duct an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Re­ports can be made via our hot­line 623-OS­HA (6742), or through our Face­book page."

Reid said apart from the div­ing tragedy, on­ly one oth­er ac­ci­dent had been re­port­ed to OS­HA since Petrotrin's clo­sure in 2018. He said the TTBS was in charge of the de­vel­op­ment of div­ing stan­dards.

On Fri­day OS­HA is­sued pro­hi­bi­tion no­tices against Paria and the con­trac­tor LM­CS bar­ring sub­sea main­te­nance works and div­ing op­er­a­tions by both com­pa­nies.

TTBS: We don't have the au­thor­i­ty to au­dit or as­sess div­ing com­pa­nies

Mean­while, the man­ag­er of the TTBS Stan­dard­iza­tion Di­vi­sion Na­di­ta Ra­macha­la and TTBS Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Rod­ney Ram­nath said the TTBS did not have the au­thor­i­ty "to au­dit or as­sess div­ing com­pa­nies." Ra­macha­la said the re­vi­sion of the ex­ist­ing div­ing stan­dards in­clud­ing the com­mer­cial div­ing stan­dard re­mained a top pri­or­i­ty for TTBS.

"TTBS us­es a con­sen­sus-based ap­proach to de­vel­op na­tion­al stan­dards. The Spec­i­fi­ca­tion Com­mit­tee for Com­mer­cial Div­ing cre­at­ed by TTBS com­pris­es stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing large and small div­ing com­pa­nies. How­ev­er, the con­sen­sus among the stake­hold­ers on the use of Scu­ba div­ing in com­mer­cial div­ing op­er­a­tions has not yet been reached," she said.

She not­ed that the TTBS is in favour of com­pa­nies us­ing na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards to man­age risks and im­prove health and safe­ty prac­tices.

How­ev­er, she ex­plained that these stan­dards were vol­un­tary.

"They do not have the force of law, that is they are not manda­to­ry doc­u­ments but pro­vide guid­ance to in­dus­try stake­hold­ers. The ex­ist­ing na­tion­al stan­dards are still cur­rent and can be used by or­gan­i­sa­tions as nec­es­sary. They are be­ing re­viewed against oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards for com­mer­cial div­ing op­er­a­tions," she said.

Asked how many ac­ci­dents have oc­curred since 2018, Ra­macha­la said: "TTBS does not have this da­ta and it is not with­in TTBS’ man­date to re­quire that com­pa­nies re­port div­ing ac­ci­dents to it. Such re­ports are to be made to the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency.

"An MOU was signed be­tween TTBS and the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency which al­lows for col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween both agen­cies in re­la­tion to as­sist­ing each oth­er ac­cord­ing­ly with their re­spec­tive man­dates, with the re­view and de­vel­op­ment of ap­proved codes of prac­tices, guide­lines, tech­ni­cal guid­ance doc­u­ments and stan­dards as nec­es­sary."

Asked what the TTBS could do to en­sure that the Feb­ru­ary tragedy does not hap­pen again, Ra­macha­la said: "Where re­quired by gov­ern­ment min­istries, agen­cies or in­dus­try stake­hold­ers, TTBS pro­vides best prac­tices in the form of vol­un­tary stan­dards for use by the rel­e­vant par­ties. We en­cour­age the div­ing in­dus­try to utilise the vol­un­tary na­tion­al stan­dards in­clud­ing the (TTS/ISO 45001:2020, Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty Man­age­ment Sys­tems–Re­quire­ments with Guid­ance for UseTTS 620:2008, Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Risk As­sess­ment–Re­quire­ments and TTS 621:2007, Re­quire­ments for Con­trac­tor Safe­ty Man­age­ment Sys­tem."

Ra­macha­la en­cour­aged stake­hold­ers to par­tic­i­pate in the TTBS stan­dards de­vel­op­ment process and to pro­vide feed­back dur­ing the pub­lic com­ment pe­ri­od.

"We have a Na­tion­al Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee for Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health and the na­tion­al health and safe­ty stan­dards are be­ing re­viewed ac­cord­ing­ly," she added.

Stan­dards for div­ing

TTBS has three ex­ist­ing vol­un­tary stan­dards for div­ing:

*TTS 539:1997, Code of prac­tice for safe­ty in com­mer­cial div­ing op­er­a­tions *TTS/CSA Z275.5:2010, Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Div­er Train­ing–Spec­i­fi­ca­tion

*TTS 571:2014, Recre­ation­al dive–Re­quire­ments for op­er­a­tions of fa­cil­i­ties.

In­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices

Ra­macha­la said in the on­go­ing re­view of the com­mer­cial div­ing stan­dard by TTBS, tech­ni­cal re­search has been con­duct­ed us­ing in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices from stan­dards bod­ies such as Cana­di­an Stan­dards As­so­ci­a­tion (CSA Z275.2-20), Stan­dards Aus­tralia/Stan­dards New Zealand (AS/NZS 2299.1:2015), and Sin­ga­pore Stan­dards Coun­cil (SS 511:2018). Tech­ni­cal doc­u­ments is­sued by oth­er bod­ies were al­so re­viewed such as the In­ter­na­tion­al Ma­rine Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (IM­CA) and AD­CI (As­so­ci­a­tion of Div­ing Con­trac­tors In­ter­na­tion­al).