RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney for the fam­i­lies of the Paria div­ing tragedy, Prakash Ra­mad­har, says the land­mark judg­ment of the Privy Coun­cil on Tues­day could nul­li­fy charges brought un­der the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act (OS­HA). He is call­ing for an­swers on who was re­spon­si­ble for not lay­ing charges with­in the re­quired six-month pe­ri­od.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter the rul­ing, Ra­mad­har said, “In re­la­tion to the Privy Coun­cil’s rul­ing that of­fences un­der the OSH leg­is­la­tion ought to have been filed with­in six months of it be­com­ing known, it is of course clear that there is now a six-month lim­i­ta­tion, and there­fore if any mat­ters have been filed out­side of that pe­ri­od, they will be­come a nul­li­ty.”

Mind­ful that the case is on­go­ing, Ra­mad­har did not com­ment di­rect­ly on the Paria mat­ter but said, “As a gen­er­al propo­si­tion, even in sum­ma­ry of­fences, there is a re­quire­ment that those charges be made with­in six months of the of­fence. So that has been a bit of a guid­ing light for those who have to ap­pre­ci­ate the time­lines for lay­ing charges.”

Turn­ing to the Paria div­ing tragedy, Ra­mad­har said, “It is in­cum­bent up­on us all to ap­pre­ci­ate that no charges were laid un­til quite a long time af­ter. There is no pro­hi­bi­tion to lay­ing a charge with­out pur­su­ing it at any giv­en time if you are await­ing the out­come of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry’s find­ings, and there­fore, we have to learn from that mov­ing for­ward.

“At a rel­e­vant time, many voic­es were raised about this is­sue, and OSH at that time, pop­u­lat­ed by those who had the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, ought to have been very sen­si­tive to this, and we asked the ques­tion, why were not charges laid from their ini­tial in­quiry and in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which is sep­a­rate and apart from any oth­er Com­mis­sion of En­quiry’s find­ings, and leave it there if nec­es­sary so that you would not have a du­pli­ca­tion be­fore two sep­a­rate, the Mag­is­trate’s Court as an ex­am­ple and a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry.”

Ra­mad­har called for ac­count­abil­i­ty, ask­ing, “We asked who gave the in­struc­tions or who did not give the in­struc­tions to lay those charges. It was al­ways sus­pect. Many had raised those is­sues, and I think we need to find that out.”

The Privy Coun­cil’s rul­ing arose from a case be­tween the OSH Au­thor­i­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies over a 2016 work­place in­jury. It held that pros­e­cu­tions must be filed with­in six months of a breach com­ing to the au­thor­i­ty’s at­ten­tion, whether be­fore a mag­is­trate or the In­dus­tri­al Court, and that the two-year lim­it in the leg­is­la­tion on­ly ap­plies to civ­il law­suits.

This has di­rect con­se­quences for the pros­e­cu­tions aris­ing from the Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, Paria tragedy, when five divers em­ployed by Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices (LM­CS) were sucked in­to a 30-inch pipeline at Paria Fu­el’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty. On­ly one div­er, Christo­pher Boodram, sur­vived. The oth­er divers—Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Yusuf Hen­ry, and Kaz­im Ali Jr—died.

Fol­low­ing a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in 2024, charges were filed against Paria, LM­CS, Paria gen­er­al man­ag­er Mush­taq Mo­hammed, ter­mi­nal op­er­a­tions man­ag­er Collin Piper, and LM­CS di­rec­tor Kaz­im Ali Snr. They all plead­ed not guilty.