RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Griev­ing rel­a­tives of the four de­ceased Paria divers poured out on­to the streets of Cou­va yes­ter­day, in a solemn march to mark the sec­ond an­niver­sary of the divers’ deaths.

The lone sur­vivor, Christo­pher Boodram did not at­tend, too trau­ma­tised by his har­row­ing mem­o­ries of that fate­ful day.

Clad in white, black, and blue un­der the ban­ner of “Paria Plat­form–A Call for Jus­tice”, the pro­ces­sion start­ed near the Cou­va Mag­is­trate’s Court at 9 am, cul­mi­nat­ing at the Cou­va South Grounds, Cam­den Road.

Tears flowed freely as some rel­a­tives laid flow­ers at the memo­r­i­al sites be­neath the sprawl­ing trees. They al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that they have not yet met with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

The PM, re­spond­ing to a ques­tion about meet­ing the rel­a­tives at a me­dia con­fer­ence at White­hall, Port-of-Spain, ear­li­er this month, said, “If the fam­i­lies want to meet me as Prime Min­is­ter, I will meet with them but I will not meet with them in the con­text of any po­lit­i­cal out­come of the Paria tragedy.

“They are fam­i­lies—I have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for them—I’m the Prime Min­is­ter of all of T&T and if the fam­i­lies want to meet with me, I’ll meet with them, but I’m not play­ing pol­i­tics with the Paria tragedy.”

Though Boodram was ab­sent, a speech was de­liv­ered on his be­half, re­it­er­at­ing calls for jus­tice and gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion to ad­dress the ram­pant ex­ploita­tion in the div­ing in­dus­try. Boodram had said ear­li­er this month that he was ea­ger­ly await­ing a meet­ing with Dr Row­ley to talk about com­pen­sa­tion and reg­u­lat­ing the com­mer­cial div­ing in­dus­try.

Branch pres­i­dent of the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union Christo­pher Jack­man echoed these sen­ti­ments, high­light­ing the con­cern­ing trend of ac­ci­dents and fa­tal­i­ties in the in­dus­try.

“We see a trou­bling trend in the in­dus­try as it re­lates to ac­ci­dents and fa­tal­i­ties. There is no dis­cus­sion be­tween the Min­istry of Labour and the trade union, in par­tic­u­lar, about this mat­ter. We want leg­is­la­tion to ad­dress this,” Jack­man said.

Vanes­sa Kussie, the wife of div­er Rishi Nages­sar, broke down as she re­mem­bered his thought­ful ges­tures, “Flow­ers were some­thing he gave me all the time. He would buy me gifts. He did not wait un­til my birth­day. I miss that, my chil­dren do it now,” she lament­ed.

MP for Cou­va South Rudranath In­dars­ingh slammed the Prime Min­is­ter for not meet­ing with the fam­i­lies as yet.

“The Prime Min­is­ter has once again de­ceived the rel­a­tives of these divers. He made it pub­lic that he was will­ing to meet with fam­i­lies to lis­ten to their plight but up to to­day, we have not heard what is the po­si­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter in meet­ing with them,” In­dars­ingh said.

He again called for the fir­ing of the en­tire Paria Board and se­nior ex­ec­u­tives in­clud­ing gen­er­al man­ag­er Mush­taq Mo­hammed and op­er­a­tions man­ag­er Col­in Piper who re­tained their po­si­tions af­ter the four deaths.

PM un­aware of any re­quest made at OPM to meet with the divers’ rel­a­tives

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­nied that he broke his promise to meet the fam­i­lies.

He al­so said he was not aware of any re­quest made at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter for a meet­ing with the divers’ rel­a­tives.

Clar­i­fy­ing the is­sue, he wrote via What­sApp: “I was told by the me­dia in one of my press con­fer­ences, that THEY (rel­a­tives) told the me­dia that THEY want­ed to meet with me. I was then asked by the me­dia if I would meet with them. In the con­text of that in­di­ca­tion which they made to the me­dia, I replied in the af­fir­ma­tive that if they asked to meet me I would en­ter­tain their re­quest and meet with them. Sub­se­quent to that con­ver­sa­tion be­tween me and the me­dia, I am not aware that any re­quest has been made by them to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.”

He fur­ther wrote: “Un­der these cir­cum­stances of fact, it can­not be said that I promised to meet with them and have not done so. That would be a to­tal­ly mis­lead­ing mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the facts.”

Prakash con­demns PM’s in­dif­fer­ence

But the at­tor­ney for the divers’ fam­i­lies, Prakash Ra­mad­har con­demned the Prime Min­is­ter’s in­dif­fer­ence, em­pha­sis­ing the dis­re­gard for the work­ing peo­ple of the coun­try.

“Hav­ing spo­ken to the fam­i­ly, they are not beg­ging to meet the Prime Min­is­ter. No one is on bend­ed knees to him. He serves as Prime Min­is­ter and one would have thought that in a mat­ter of such a tragedy where a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry has re­port­ed li­a­bil­i­ty and cul­pa­bil­i­ty in a board-ap­point­ed, State-run com­pa­ny, if the is­sue was raised, the very least he could have done was reach out and say if they wish to see him, he would be hap­py to en­ter­tain them but cer­tain­ly that is not the cul­ture of this Prime Min­is­ter,” Ra­mad­har said.

“It ap­pears that the lit­tle peo­ple of this coun­try, our work­ing peo­ple, mean very lit­tle in the eyes of those who wield pow­er.”

Boodram, Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Ju­nior, Rishi Nages­sar, and Yusuf Hen­ry had been do­ing main­te­nance works in­side a 36-inch pipeline on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, when they were sucked in. Boodram made it out alive and told the Paria team that his col­leagues were right be­hind him. How­ev­er, Paria ex­ec­u­tives de­cid­ed not to send any­one back in­to the pipeline to save the oth­er divers even though pro­fes­sion­als had ar­rived to con­duct a res­cue mis­sion. Fol­low­ing the CoE, a rec­om­men­da­tion was made for Paria to face charges of cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter.