Derek Achong

Give us the re­sources to do our job.

This was the plea made by Queen’s Coun­sel Jerome Lynch, the chair­man of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­ves­ti­gat­ing the trag­ic deaths of four divers while per­form­ing main­te­nance on a pipeline at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty in Feb­ru­ary.

He did so while de­liv­er­ing his open­ing ad­dress dur­ing the first hear­ing of the com­mis­sion at Tow­er D at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Com­plex in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Lynch said: “It falls on me to say whilst we stand ready to do what we are charged to do, we can­not do so with­out ba­sic tools to car­ry it out. To those whose re­spon­si­bil­i­ty it is to equip I ask pub­licly: please help us do our job.”

“It is not fair and it is not right,” he added.

While Lynch ad­mit­ted that the com­mis­sion’s work was par­tial­ly de­layed by the res­ig­na­tion of re­tired Ja­maican ju­rist Den­nis Mor­ri­son, QC, who was ini­tial­ly se­lect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment to chair the com­mis­sion, he claimed it was main­ly due to a lack of of­fice fur­ni­ture, equip­ment, staff and even sta­tionery such as pa­per and pens.

He claimed that the com­mis­sion on­ly had a sec­re­tary for sev­er­al months be­fore be­ing as­signed a man­ag­er and in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy staff on Mon­day.

“There is a lim­it to what one la­dy can do,” Lynch said.

He claimed that its of­fice at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) was with­out of­fice fur­ni­ture up till a few weeks ago, when En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young in­ter­vened by sourc­ing such from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Lynch apol­o­gised for the de­lay in the start of work, which he not­ed was out of the com­mis­sion’s con­trol.

“To those who await an­swers as to how and why their loved ones died and to the gen­er­al pub­lic, you have our un­re­served apol­o­gy that this Com­mis­sion of En­quiry has been de­layed yet again,” Lynch said.

How­ev­er, he claimed the is­sues should not af­fect the com­mis­sion’s abil­i­ty to com­plete ev­i­den­tial hear­ings and de­liv­er its fi­nal re­port around East­er next year.

“I want to as­sure every­one that we would do every­thing we can to make up the time,” Lynch said.

“The in­quiry can­not bring them back but it can and it will pro­vide an­swers to the in­evitable ques­tions of how a tragedy of this kind could oc­cur in to­day’s so­ci­ety. In that, I hope we would be able to pro­vide some small mea­sure of so­lace to all,” he added.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Lynch called on at­ten­dees to ob­serve a mo­ment of si­lence for the four divers who died.

“It is right we should re­mem­ber them with sor­row and com­pas­sion,” he said.

He al­so raised con­cerns about the fact that lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­lies of two of the divers and their col­league Christo­pher Boodram, who sur­vived, re­quest­ed as­sis­tance to fund their le­gal fees.

Not­ing that the com­mis­sion had no pow­er to pro­vide le­gal aid or com­pel such, he stat­ed that they were ad­vised to reach out to the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al for as­sis­tance.

He al­so point­ed out that while the com­mis­sion felt that le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for them is im­por­tant, they could be com­pelled to tes­ti­fy even if they did not re­ceive the as­sis­tance.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, five divers em­ployed with in­de­pen­dent con­trac­tor LM­CS Lim­it­ed —Boodram, Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Kaz­im Ali Jr and Yusuf Hen­ry— were sucked in­to the 30-inch-di­am­e­ter pipeline they were per­form­ing main­te­nance work on.

Boodram, who like his col­leagues was se­ri­ous­ly in­jured, man­aged to make his way to the en­trance of the pipeline and was res­cued.

Boodram and his col­leagues on the sur­face sub­se­quent­ly claimed they were barred from at­tempt­ing to res­cue the oth­ers, who Boodram claimed were still alive and were await­ing as­sis­tance.

Three of the divers’ bod­ies were re­cov­ered on Feb­ru­ary 28, while Na­gas­sar’s was re­cov­ered the fol­low­ing day.

Cab­i­net ini­tial­ly ap­point­ed a five-mem­ber team to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent but scrapped the plan due to pub­lic crit­i­cism, which led to the with­draw­al of for­mer T&T En­er­gy Cham­ber chair­man Eu­gene Tiah.

In his ad­dress to the com­mis­sion, Se­nior Coun­sel Gilbert Pe­ter­son, who is lead­ing Paria’s le­gal team, re­quest­ed ex­ten­sions to file wit­ness state­ments and ev­i­dence.

Pe­ter­son claimed the com­pa­ny’s gen­er­al man­ag­er, Mush­taq Mo­hammed, suf­fered a death in his fam­i­ly while abroad re­cent­ly and need­ed to com­plete his.

He al­so re­vealed that the hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber, from which the divers were sucked in­to the pipeline, is cur­rent­ly 60 feet un­der­wa­ter af­ter it fell while be­ing re­moved by LM­CS.

“It end­ed up on the seabed,” Pe­ter­son said, as he not­ed that the com­pa­ny did not seek to re­cov­er it as the in­ci­dent is cur­rent­ly the sub­ject of a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

At­tor­ney Col­in Kan­ga­loo, who led the le­gal team for the Min­istry of En­er­gy, al­so re­quest­ed ad­di­tion­al time to file its state­ments and ev­i­dence.

Lynch even­tu­al­ly grant­ed the ex­ten­sions but re­duced the time frame sought by the com­pa­ny and the min­istry.

Ev­i­den­tial hear­ings are sched­uled from No­vem­ber 21 to 24, De­cem­ber 5 to 8 and De­cem­ber 12 to 15. The com­mis­sion al­so re­served dates be­tween Jan­u­ary 9 and 13 if re­quired.

The com­mis­sion is ex­pect­ed to make a site vis­it to Paria’s fa­cil­i­ty dur­ing the first set of hear­ings.

The com­mis­sion is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, Ron­nie Bisses­sar and Vi­jaya Ma­haraj.