Gail Alexan­der

No “cov­er-up com­mit­tee!”

The Shar­ma probe team’s re­port on the re­cent ac­ci­dent at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed’s com­pound must be pub­lished in its en­tire­ty and ful­ly scru­ti­nised by Par­lia­ment.

“And it must al­so go thor­ough Par­lia­ment’s stand­ing team on En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs,” UNC MP Rudy In­dars­ingh fur­ther added at yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing.

In­dars­ingh said the brief­ing was UNC’s analy­sis of the ac­ci­dent from the Op­po­si­tion’s point of view.

In­dars­ingh said to­mor­row’s In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day would find some fe­males with­out their hus­bands, broth­ers and sons who died in the in­ci­dent.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, LM­CS divers Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Yusuff Hen­ry, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Christo­pher Boodram were sucked in­to a Paria pipeline on which they were work­ing.

Their bod­ies of four of the divers were re­cov­ered last week. Christo­pher Boodram sur­vived.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young sub­se­quent­ly an­nounced a team head­ed by at­tor­ney Shiv Shar­ma to probe the in­ci­dent.

In­dars­ingh said Young should al­so say if the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty Act will be amend­ed to have stiffer penal­ties if health/safe­ty is breached ahead.

UNC MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly agreed there must be as­sur­ances the team’s find­ings will be made pub­lic, and any gaps fixed.

In­dars­ingh said the full re­port must be pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment since Gov­ern­ment’s track record on probes and re­ports had en­gen­dered lit­tle trust in the ad­min­is­tra­tion. Plus he said, UNC main­tains con­cern on the team’s com­po­si­tion.

In­dars­ingh claimed Gov­ern­ment did not an­swer ques­tions posed in the 2017 fer­ry in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­port: that a re­port on a Ju­ly 2020 com­mu­ni­ty re­cov­ery is­sue wasn’t made pub­lic, nor was any re­port on the 2021 Ni­quan ex­plo­sion probe.

He felt the team prob­ing the re­cent ac­ci­dent was a “de­fence team” which will “de­fend a Gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed board.”

Mak­ing cer­tain al­le­ga­tions about Paria chair­man New­man George and the Prime Min­is­ter, he said he felt the probe would not be tru­ly in­de­pen­dent and would be a “cov­er up com­mit­tee.”

In­dars­ingh re­it­er­at­ed the UNC’s call for team mem­ber Eu­gene Tiah to step down since he said Young nev­er dis­closed he rep­re­sent­ed Tiah in an Evolv­ing Tech­nolo­gies and De­vel­op­ment court is­sue.

In­dars­ingh claimed the sit­u­a­tion with Tiah “opened the door to gov­ern­ment ma­nip­u­la­tion and cov­er up.”

He said UNC would con­tin­ue pres­sure for Tiah to step down, “Is Tiah a clos­et PNM, in­de­pen­dent PNM or a card-bear­ing PNM mem­ber?”

In­dars­ingh al­so asked who on the team was qual­i­fied to en­ter the pipeline where the divers were.

He added there was con­cern about the team’s ex­pe­ri­ence with deep sea weld­ing and un­der­wa­ter work op­er­a­tion.

UNC MP Rush­ton Paray, al­so con­cerned about “lack of un­der­wa­ter ex­pe­ri­ence” on the team, felt their terms of ref­er­ence were a “pre med­i­tat­ed de­ci­sion, heav­i­ly slant­ed to ab­solve Paria from any re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and neg­li­gence” and were de­signed to hold LM­CS to ac­count and “be blamed.”

He said he felt the truth might not emerge.

Paray felt the probe must in­clude Paria’s Health and Safe­ty prac­tices since Paria had a du­ty to have H&S plans “none of which seemed to be present.”

In­dars­ingh said UNC got re­ports of al­leged com­pro­mised H&S pro­to­cols at Paria.

He urged Paria work­ers to have a day of sol­i­dar­i­ty, down tools, as­sem­ble, speak out and send a mes­sage to man­age­ment to ad­dress H&S.