Renu­ka Singh

Heavy le­gal hit­ters have signed on for this Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Paria div­ing ac­ci­dent that claimed the lives of four divers back in Feb­ru­ary.

Se­nior Coun­sel Gilbert Pe­ter­son has con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that he will be rep­re­sent­ing State-owned Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny for the du­ra­tion of the CoE.

The com­mis­sion it­self has re­tained Se­nior Coun­sel and for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj as its lead coun­sel.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the LM­CS com­pa­ny but was told that “no one was avail­able” to speak to the me­dia and it of­fered no com­ment when asked about le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the CoE.

Lone sur­vivor Christo­pher Boodram is cur­rent­ly get­ting free le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion from for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan.

Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that the two se­lect­ed com­mis­sion­ers - Jus­tice Den­nis Mor­ri­son and Gre­go­ry Wil­son were sworn in yes­ter­day and met with the le­gal coun­sels. But while the for­mal­i­ties are be­ing set­tled, the bat­tle is con­tin­u­ing be­tween Paria and lone sur­vivor Boodram, over who is fi­nan­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble for his care.

Boodram’s lawyers wrote to Paria on March 22 seek­ing an­swers and in re­sponse on Wednes­day, Paria said that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for safe­ty lay with LM­CS and not the State com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to Paria, Boodram “sus­tained in­juries while un­der­tak­ing work un­der the di­rec­tion and su­per­vi­sion of LM­CS.”

Paria al­so not­ed that it LM­CS’ con­tract with Paria states that it would per­form five spe­cif­ic du­ties:

1. In­struct its per­son­nel on the safe­ty reg­u­la­tions, safe work­ing prac­tices and con­di­tions that are re­quired for an In­dus­tri­al/Ma­rine En­vi­ron­ment.

2. Pro­vide and main­tain all safe­ty equip­ment and re­quire­ments nec­es­sary for its per­son­nel and for ex­e­cu­tion of work and in­struct its per­son­nel on the prop­er use and main­te­nance of same.

3. Sup­ply ad­e­quate, com­pe­tent and cer­ti­fied/li­censed labour for the spe­cif­ic job func­tions, full-time su­per­vi­sion, ma­te­ri­als, tools/equip­ment (crane, barge, hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber etc), trans­port (land and sea), scaf­fold­ing and oth­er con­sum­ables for time­ly com­ple­tion of works.

4. En­sure that its ve­hi­cles, tools and equip­ment were in good work­ing or­der and used in ac­cor­dance with man­u­fac­tur­ers spec­i­fi­ca­tions

5. En­sure that its tools and equip­ment were in­spect­ed be­fore each use to en­sure that they are fit for pur­pose and that there are no de­fects.

Paria said that it was will­ing to as­sist with Boodram’s med­ical bills “with­out any ad­mis­sion of li­a­bil­i­ty on its part and pure­ly as a ges­ture of good­will” but on­ly if Paria se­lects and ap­proves the doc­tors.

An­oth­er caveat is that Paria must re­ceive a de­scrip­tion of Boodram’s cur­rent med­ical con­di­tion and all pre­vi­ous med­ical re­ports.

Paria al­so want­ed to know whether Boodram reached out to LM­CS for fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance.

Boodram has pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed that he is fi­nan­cial­ly un­able to par­tic­i­pate prop­er­ly in the CoE.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has said that the bud­get is be­ing pre­pared and will be made pub­lic short­ly.

It was not clear whether le­gal costs for all par­tic­i­pants will be fac­tored in­to that bud­get.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia again reached out to LM­CS about Paria lay­ing the blame on the com­pa­ny but was once again told “no com­ment”.