The Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Paria/LM­CS div­ing tragedy has asked the Pres­i­dent for yet an­oth­er ex­ten­sion be­fore sub­mit­ting its fi­nal re­port.

But one of the vic­tims’ rel­a­tives told Guardian Me­dia that this is now high­ly sus­pi­cious.

This re­port was ini­tial­ly due in May, but the CoE was grant­ed an ex­ten­sion un­til Au­gust 30, 2023. How­ev­er, in a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo yes­ter­day, CoE Chair­man Jerome Lynch, King’s Coun­sel (KC) sought a fur­ther three months to get their af­fairs in or­der. The new­ly re­quest­ed dead­line is No­vem­ber 30.

“Re­gret­tably, this new dead­line (Au­gust 30) will not be met as there have been a num­ber of new de­ci­sions deal­ing with the im­por­tance of the prop­er pro­ce­dure to be adopt­ed in Com­mis­sions of En­quiry,” KC Lynch wrote in his let­ter to Pres­i­dent Kan­ga­loo.

Lynch cit­ed two cas­es, first­ly from the Unit­ed King­dom, R (Hex­press Health­care Ltd) v Care Qual­i­ty Com­mis­sion (2023) EW­CA Civ 238 and from Trinidad and To­ba­go, Civ­il Ap­peal p 286 of 2020 be­tween Hart v The Com­mis­sion of En­quiry-La Al­turas Hous­ing and Oth­ers which guid­ed his de­ci­sion.

Lynch said these cas­es dealt with a range of is­sues to en­sure fair­ness to every­one and that the par­ties have the right to a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty to make their case. He added this specif­i­cal­ly ap­plies where there are crit­i­cisms of in­di­vid­u­als that may af­fect their ca­reers and lead to rec­om­men­da­tions as to crim­i­nal con­duct.

In his let­ter Lynch ex­plained, “Not every­one we may crit­i­cise was rep­re­sent­ed at the En­quiry. To that end the Com­mis­sion has giv­en the par­ties ex­tra time to pro­vide their writ­ten re­spons­es where they have asked, and the Com­mis­sion still awaits some.”

Lynch added that it is im­per­a­tive to not on­ly act in the in­ter­est of fair­ness but to al­so be per­ceived as fair. The CoE chair­man said the in­ten­tion is for their find­ings to not be brushed aside like what hap­pened with the Las Al­turas Hous­ing En­quiry where its fair­ness was chal­lenged.

“We are al­so very live to the need to en­sure that the pos­si­bil­i­ties of a ju­di­cial re­view be­ing mount­ed by any of the par­ties crit­i­cised by this Com­mis­sion of En­quiry is ad­dressed, lest such ac­tion cause rather more sub­stan­tial de­lay and/or un­war­rant­ed lit­i­ga­tion or worse still the an­nul­ment of any part of the fi­nal re­port,” Lynch wrote.

Lynch said while the Las Al­turas En­quiry re­port was done com­mend­ably in 20 months, most of its find­ings were set aside.

He told the Pres­i­dent that the No­vem­ber 30 dead­line will rep­re­sent a 16-month timescale from his ap­point­ment as chair­man to the date of the fi­nal re­port.

The CoE chair­man al­so re­vealed that the com­mis­sion­ers had pro­fes­sion­al com­mit­ments out­side of this En­quiry which con­tributed to fur­ther de­lays.

Lynch said a vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence will be arranged in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, where he plans to fur­ther ex­plain the re­quest for an­oth­er ex­ten­sion.

But Rishi Na­gas­sar’s wid­ow has some ques­tions of her own and is not at all pleased by the ad­di­tion­al de­lay.

Vanes­sa Kussie told Guardian Me­dia that she is wor­ried that this ex­ten­sion is geared to­wards giv­ing Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny more time to ex­on­er­ate them­selves from any wrong­do­ing.

“They are drag­ging, they are drag­ging it. Mr Lynch is not look­ing good, it is as if they are favour­ing the com­pa­ny over the fam­i­ly,” Kussie said, adding that there was enough time for those in­volved to have their say.

“They are play­ing with my hus­band’s life and what are they look­ing for now? Lies to make up? That is how it’s look­ing to me, they are mak­ing up lies to tell a sto­ry that will be in favour of Paria.”

Kussie posit­ed that “they spent so many mil­lions and now they ex­tend­ing it? For more mil­lions? They are study­ing their pock­ets and not the hurt and pain they are caus­ing by shift­ing this every time”.

Kussie was re­cent­ly elect­ed as a coun­cil­lor un­der the ban­ner of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for the new­ly cre­at­ed dis­trict of Cou­va West/Roys­to­nia.

In Feb­ru­ary 2022, five divers, em­ploy­ees of LM­CS Lim­it­ed, were sucked in­to a pipeline at the No 36 Sealine ris­er on Berth #6 at Paria Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd, Pointe-a-Pierre.

Four of those divers, Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Yusuf Hen­ry, re­mained trapped in the pipeline and it took a few days for their bod­ies to be re­cov­ered.

A Com­mis­sion of En­quiry was set up to in­ves­ti­gate the ac­ci­dent af­ter rel­a­tives of the vic­tims and mem­bers of the pub­lic ac­cused Paria of re­fus­ing to res­cue the men.

The or­der to es­tab­lish the CoE was giv­en by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in March 2022.