DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has giv­en the as­sur­ance that the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) re­port in­to the Paria Fu­el div­ing tragedy will be made pub­lic once it is re­viewed by Cab­i­net.

Dr Row­ley made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s yes­ter­day, on his re­turn from Lon­don where he met with en­er­gy com­pa­nies.

As he ad­dressed mem­bers of the pub­lic dur­ing the con­fer­ence, which was live-streamed, Dr Row­ley at­tempt­ed to quell con­cerns that the re­port would be al­tered once it reached Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

“I find that to be an im­per­ti­nence. The Cab­i­net of Trinidad and To­ba­go is the place where the busi­ness of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go is con­duct­ed by re­spon­si­ble rep­re­sen­ta­tives,” he said.

“It’s go­ing to the Cab­i­net, the Cab­i­net will look at it and it will come to the Par­lia­ment at the ear­li­est. So, this ques­tion about the re­port be­ing sani­tised, ab­solute non­sense! There is no in­ten­tion what­so­ev­er to have any­thing done to the re­port in the con­text of sani­tis­ing and pro­tect­ing A, B, C or D,” he added.

The 380-page fi­nal re­port at the con­clu­sion of the $15 mil­lion en­quiry, was hand­ed over to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo by CoE Chair­man Jerome Lynch, KC, on No­vem­ber 30.

Kan­ga­loo al­so re­ceived tens of thou­sands of doc­u­ments, video ma­te­r­i­al, vo­lu­mi­nous cor­re­spon­dence and tran­scripts of ev­i­dence on a hard dri­ve.

The re­port in­ves­ti­gat­ed the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the deaths of em­ploy­ees of the Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices (LM­CS), divers Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry, Kaz­im Ali Jr and Rishi Na­gas­sar. The four died af­ter be­ing sucked in­to a 30-inch pipeline on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, dur­ing main­te­nance work on Paria’s Sealine 36 pipeline at Berth No.6 in the Pointe-a-Pierre har­bour.

The lone sur­vivor and fel­low div­er, Christo­pher Boodram, was res­cued af­ter sus­tain­ing se­ri­ous in­juries. Boodram lat­er said the men were alive but could not get out.

In Jan­u­ary, the com­mis­sion’s at­tor­ney, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, called for the re­port to be pub­lished and laid in Par­lia­ment. Sim­i­lar calls were made by the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies.

CLI­CO CoE in trou­ble

af­ter over $100m spent

The Prime Min­is­ter is al­so con­sid­er­ing the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the CoE in­to the col­lapse of CL Fi­nan­cial, the par­ent com­pa­ny of CLI­CO, and the Hin­du Cred­it Union.

As he made his case, Row­ley said the en­quiry, led by Sir An­tho­ny Col­man, cost the State well over $100 mil­lion with no re­port ex­pect­ed in the near fu­ture.

He likened it to the Jus­tice Li­onel Seemu­n­gal CoE in­to the over­selling of tick­ets for the 1989 World Cup match at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. He re­called that the en­quiry was dis­con­tin­ued by then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning af­ter the prin­ci­pal ac­tor was not sum­moned to be ques­tioned for years.

“A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion ex­ists with the Col­man en­quiry and the Gov­ern­ment will have to take a de­ci­sion be­cause af­ter the last time I in­quired, the fig­ure that I seem to re­call is 100-plus mil­lion dol­lars spent on that en­quiry and I don’t know of a sin­gle page of any re­port pro­duced by it,” he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter claimed the re­cip­i­ent of that largesse ac­cost­ed him for a pay­ment of $45 mil­lion. Asked what had been sub­mit­ted, he said he was told the com­pa­ny read 30 mil­lion pages of Cli­co doc­u­ments.

“If we have spent over $100 mil­lion in scan­ning every page in Cli­co’s his­to­ry, how much we in­tend to pay to have them read? And the peo­ple of T&T will have to take a de­ci­sion as to whether this largesse should con­tin­ue or whether we should cut our loss­es be­cause this is 2009 this whole thing start­ed. It is now 2023 and I am mind­ed to ad­vise the Cab­i­net to put an end to this,” he said.