AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is de­mand­ing that Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo re­lease the con­tents of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) re­port in­to the Paria div­ing tragedy. But adding a com­plex lay­er to the is­sue, Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts yes­ter­day claimed there was a sin­is­ter and clan­des­tine link be­tween the deaths of the four men and the 2020 vis­it to this coun­try of Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez.

It’s a claim that Min­is­ter Stu­art Young ve­he­ment­ly re­ject­ed as “non­sense”.

Roberts told the me­dia at the par­ty’s head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas that if the CoE Chair­man can say the Paria div­ing tragedy was “no act of God”, then Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo needs to al­low the pop­u­la­tion to learn who was re­al­ly to blame.

“Our cit­i­zens have died, we do not know why, we want many an­swers, not on­ly for the fam­i­lies, but for the fu­ture for the labour­ers and for all Trinidad and To­ba­go. The re­port must be made pub­lic. Tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars have been spent and we must know the truth. Be­cause it goes against hu­man­i­ty,” Roberts as­sert­ed.

Sim­i­lar to state­ments made by the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU), Roberts al­so wants charges to be laid against the cul­pa­ble par­ties if the rec­om­men­da­tions of the re­port point to such an ac­tion.

“So, if crim­i­nal charges, yes crim­i­nal charges. If it needs fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion, then yes fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Peo­ple should have lost their job any­way, be­cause even with­out a re­port man are dead, end of sto­ry,” Roberts said.

How­ev­er, the Sen­a­tor spent most of his 55-minute con­tri­bu­tion seek­ing to high­light an al­leged link be­tween the Paria tragedy and the March 27, 2020, vis­it of Ro­driguez dur­ing the pan­dem­ic when this coun­try’s bor­ders were closed to air and sea traf­fic. Roberts said there must be a rea­son why Paria’s Sealine 36 pipeline at Berth No 6 in the Pointe-a-Pierre har­bour need­ed main­te­nance on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022.

“I put it to you that pipe that was un­der the ground, that was un­nec­es­sary, was de­com­mis­sioned and we were not re­fin­ing, they have to say why the men were re­fur­bish­ing that pipe. What was the rea­son for do­ing it. They will have to con­coct some­thing, but I put it to you that was a new strat­e­gy, I prof­fer that there is some­thing sur­rep­ti­tious about the job that was be­ing done,” Roberts al­leged.

Re­spond­ing to the al­le­ga­tion of a pos­si­ble link be­tween Ro­driguez’s vis­it and the death of the divers, Min­is­ter Young told Guardian Me­dia, “Anil Roberts has nev­er been a source of use­ful in­for­ma­tion or a source of the truth. This is no ex­cep­tion. That state­ment is com­plete­ly fic­tion­al and non­sen­si­cal. There is no truth to it what­so­ev­er.”