Akash Sama­roo

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is call­ing on BP Trinidad and To­ba­go (BPTT) and Shell to with­draw from the com­mit­tee tasked with look­ing in­to the in­ci­dent which led to the deaths of four divers.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Sen­a­tor Wade Mark said en­er­gy com­pa­nies’ rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the five-per­son com­mit­tee would mean that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion could not be in­de­pen­dent.

“A com­mit­tee com­posed of hand­picked in­di­vid­u­als, all ul­ti­mate­ly reg­u­lat­ed by the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and by ex­ten­sion the Prime Min­is­ter, can­not bring jus­tice in this mat­ter.”

Mark said both en­er­gy com­pa­nies reg­u­lar­ly ne­go­ti­ate with the Gov­ern­ment and may not want to sour that busi­ness re­la­tion­ship by say­ing any­thing that can put a state agency in hot wa­ter.

“Right now there is a light source project cost­ing Shell and BPTT $US300 mil­lion and they are now ne­go­ti­at­ing with the Gov­ern­ment on how much they will pay per megawatt. So you have some­body you ne­go­ti­at­ing with and you have these peo­ple sit­ting on an in­de­pen­dent com­mit­tee? So, is this a case of you scratch my back and I scratch yours? That can­not be fair!”

Fur­ther­more, Mark ques­tioned if the cur­rent Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny gen­er­al man­ag­er, Mush­taq Mo­hammed, was pre­vi­ous­ly em­ployed as a se­nior man­ag­er at BPTT.

“How can you have BPTT in­ves­ti­gat­ing a for­mer se­nior man­ag­er who is at the cen­tre of the con­tro­ver­sy?”

The par­ty again called for for­eign in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tors, say­ing of­fi­cials from Unit­ed Na­tions Glob­al Com­pact and even the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion can take over.

Mark said the cur­rent team sug­gests that no re­al jus­tice will be giv­en to the af­fect­ed fam­i­lies.

“Be­cause from the out­set, this has not been about find­ing out the truth, this is about the Gov­ern­ment seek­ing to cov­er up a scan­dal of the high­est or­der,” he said.

Mean­while, the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Pointe-a-Pierre, David Lee, de­mand­ed that the in­ves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee’s terms of ref­er­ence be re­vealed.

Lee told the me­dia that the par­ty is fear­ful that the com­pa­ny’s fail­ure to res­cue the four divers will not get the at­ten­tion that it needs. He be­lieves a sep­a­rate in­ves­ti­ga­tion is need­ed.

“When you look at the com­po­si­tion of the com­mit­tee, I am hop­ing it is not on­ly re­strict­ed to eval­u­at­ing the re­pair process be­cause we feel part of that in­ves­ti­ga­tion should be about the res­cue mis­sion, from what hap­pened from 3 pm on Fri­day to when they moved from res­cue to re­cov­ery.”

Mark went fur­ther, call­ing for a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry where ex­perts and the par­ties in­volved can be sum­moned to an­swer ques­tions that may give the af­fect­ed fam­i­lies some sense of clo­sure and jus­tice.

Both par­lia­men­tar­i­ans said this Gov­ern­ment’s go-to move in any dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion is to set up a com­mit­tee to in­ves­ti­gate. The UNC said this will be the fourth one for the year so far.

Lee warned that the pub­lic will not al­low this to go away eas­i­ly.

“The lives of Kaz­im Ali Jr, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Fyzal Kur­ban and Yusuf Hen­ry are worth more than the shal­low promise of a probe,” he said.

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