JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

In­de­pen­dent ex­perts, both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al, who spe­cialise in best prac­tices for com­mer­cial div­ing, will as­sist the po­lice as they in­ves­ti­gate Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny for al­leged cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter. 

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that this was one of the up­dates giv­en to rel­a­tives of four divers who died in the Paria div­ing ac­ci­dent three years ago, dur­ing a meet­ing with of­fi­cers at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain. 

Ben­jamin said he did not want to di­vulge much in­for­ma­tion as the mat­ter was at a sen­si­tive stage, but ex­plained that ex­pert as­sis­tance plays a piv­otal role in the in­ves­ti­ga­tions. 

“Get­ting the in­for­ma­tion from these in­de­pen­dent ex­perts is what we are do­ing, it is a slight chal­lenge, but we are work­ing around it to make sure that we can at least be able to go to the DPP and be so guid­ed,” he said. 

The lone sur­vivor of the tragedy Christo­pher Boodram said he left the meet­ing feel­ing re­as­sured that the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion, though lengthy, was pro­gress­ing. 

“Af­ter speak­ing to the (act­ing) Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, I was a lit­tle bit, you know, reaf­firmed that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion now is be­ing tak­en se­ri­ous­ly. I be­lieve it took too long. It’s too long for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be go­ing on. And from that space of time to now, they haven’t re­al­ly in­ter­viewed me con­cern­ing this. And it was con­cern­ing and that’s why we get to­geth­er and we say we’re gonna come up here and find out what’s go­ing on and, you know, get down to the heart of it.” 

Present at the meet­ing, which in­clud­ed Deputy Com­mis­sion­er Suzette Mar­tin, was Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh, who said his pres­ence with the griev­ing fam­i­ly was not po­lit­i­cal but per­son­al. He called on En­er­gy Min­is­ter and prime min­is­ter-in-wait­ing Stu­art Young to say whether some of the rec­om­men­da­tions com­ing out of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the in­ci­dent have since been im­ple­ment­ed. 

While cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter is not an of­fence in T&T, it is com­mon law, which means it’s a law with­in the Com­mon­wealth ju­ris­dic­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Unit­ed King­dom, which pre­dates in­de­pen­dence and can be adopt­ed lo­cal­ly. 

The UK’s sen­tenc­ing re­view com­mit­tee pre­scribed that com­pa­nies found guilty face a fine be­tween $1.5 mil­lion to $171.8 mil­lion or a per­cent­age of the com­pa­ny’s worth, de­pend­ing on its fi­nan­cials. 

Feb­ru­ary 25 will be the third an­niver­sary of the Paria in­ci­dent.

On that day in 2022, the divers –Rishi Na­gas­sar, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry, and Boodram, em­ploy­ees of the Land and Ma­rine Con­struc­tion Ser­vices Ltd (LM­CS), were sucked in­to a 30-inch un­der­wa­ter pipeline af­ter a dif­fer­en­tial pres­sure (Delta P) event oc­curred while they were do­ing main­te­nance work at Berth No 6 in the Pointe-a-Pierre har­bour. 

Dur­ing the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry, Paria claimed it did not know the divers were in the pipe be­tween 2.45 pm and 5.30 pm on the day and on­ly be­came aware when Boodram emerged.

Paria did not al­low a res­cue mis­sion for the oth­er divers cit­ing safe­ty con­cerns. Boodram was the sole sur­vivor from the or­deal which last­ed five days.

The deaths and the pub­lic furore which fol­lowed led to the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry which cost the coun­try $15.5 mil­lion.