RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Fol­low­ing the pub­lic re­lease of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) re­port on the Paria Div­ing tragedy, at­tor­ney Prakash Ra­mad­har is in­ten­si­fy­ing the call for jus­tice, de­mand­ing a $25 mil­lion ex-gra­tia pay­ment for the divers’ fam­i­lies, in­clud­ing the lone sur­vivor Christo­pher Boodram.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at his San Fer­nan­do of­fice yes­ter­day, Ra­mad­har called for the lay­ing of crim­i­nal charges against Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Lim­it­ed’s en­tire In­ci­dent Re­sponse Team, say­ing they were “crim­i­nal­ly li­able” be­cause they failed to ini­ti­ate a res­cue mis­sion for the divers—Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jnr, Rishi Nages­sar and Yusuf Hen­ry—who died in­side a 36-inch pipeline on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022. He said the ex­ec­u­tives had proof that the oth­er divers were alive when Boodram crawled out of the pipeline.

Ra­mad­har al­so called for the im­me­di­ate re­moval of Paria ex­ec­u­tives from their cur­rent posts, cit­ing ev­i­dence of reck­less­ness and in­com­pe­tence.

Sig­nalling his in­ten­tion to file lit­i­ga­tion soon, Ra­mad­har said charg­ing the ex­ec­u­tives with cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter was not enough, as a $3,000 fine is stip­u­lat­ed once the charge is a sum­ma­ry of­fence.

“The prob­lem with this case is that Paria is a state en­ti­ty with un­lim­it­ed state re­sources, so they could go and plead guilty and get a fine and who pays it? You and I!” he de­clared.

He not­ed, how­ev­er, that if the charge is in­dictable, the fine will be de­ter­mined by a judge.

Ex­press­ing his dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the CoE’s find­ings, Ra­mad­har high­light­ed the “reck­less­ness” of Collin Piper, Paria’s Op­er­a­tions Man­ag­er, who al­leged­ly im­ped­ed the res­cue mis­sion.

The at­tor­ney stressed that each fam­i­ly af­fect­ed should re­ceive a min­i­mum $5 mil­lion pay-out from Paria, with fur­ther dis­cus­sions to de­ter­mine whether lit­i­ga­tion would pro­ceed. He urged com­pen­sa­tion not on­ly for the fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions but al­so for the emo­tion­al trau­ma, dis­re­spect, and pain en­dured by the fam­i­lies in the af­ter­math of the trag­ic or­deal.

Ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment, Ra­mad­har re­vealed that, to date, no apol­o­gy had been ex­tend­ed by Paria to the griev­ing fam­i­lies.

Ex­press­ing per­son­al grief over the in­ci­dent, Ra­mad­har sug­gest­ed that the ex­ec­u­tives should have vol­un­tar­i­ly stepped down based on their con­science. He ques­tioned the de­layed re­sponse and de­ci­sion-mak­ing process of the Paria In­ci­dent Re­sponse Team, em­pha­sis­ing the will­ing­ness of qual­i­fied divers to un­der­take a res­cue mis­sion.

Ra­mad­har not­ed that the en­tire episode on Feb­ru­ary 25 was “a may­hem of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

“Why was it that mem­bers of the Paria In­ci­dent Re­sponse Team did not de­cide what had to be done un­til days lat­er? Why did they not mount a res­cue, even though high­ly qual­i­fied divers were will­ing to res­cue these men?” Ra­mad­har ques­tioned.

Ra­mad­har dis­closed that two pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters were sent to Paria Fu­el Trad­ing, who shock­ing­ly de­nied li­a­bil­i­ty. He warned of joint le­gal ac­tion against both LM­CS and Paria if the de­mand­ed ex-gra­tia pay­ment was not ful­filled. LM­CS had been sub­con­tract­ed by Paria for pipeline main­te­nance.

And while Ra­mad­har said Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard is the one to de­ter­mine whether crim­i­nal charges will be laid against Paria of­fi­cials, Ra­mad­har ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to the Prime Min­is­ter for mak­ing the CoE re­port pub­lic. He al­so ac­knowl­edged the ef­forts of the com­mis­sion­ers and the en­tire le­gal team head­ed by at­tor­ney Ramesh Lawrence-Ma­haraj SC.

Mean­while, Cel­isha Kur­ban, the wid­ow of Fyzal Kur­ban, ex­pressed grat­i­tude to Ra­mad­har, the Prime Min­is­ter, and the com­mis­sion­ers for bring­ing cru­cial ev­i­dence to light through the CoE.