Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip David Lee is call­ing on the chair­man of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Feb­ru­ary 2022 Paria tragedy, King’s Coun­sel Jerome Lynch, to say if Paria or any oth­er arm of the state is frus­trat­ing the com­mis­sion’s process.

Lee, dur­ing a UNC press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, said the coun­try and the fam­i­ly of the four divers who died in the Paria pipeline have been de­nied clo­sure af­ter the com­mis­sion re­quest­ed an­oth­er ex­ten­sion to de­liv­er its fi­nal re­port.

The fi­nal re­port was ini­tial­ly due in May, but an ex­ten­sion was grant­ed un­til Au­gust 30 and cit­ing a range of is­sues that need to be ven­ti­lat­ed to en­sure fair­ness, Lynch re­quest­ed a sec­ond ex­ten­sion.

“We in the Op­po­si­tion say this is un­ac­cept­able. Over 550 days ago, on 25 Feb­ru­ary 2022, our na­tion wit­nessed one of the worst na­tion­al tragedies—one which took the lives of four cit­i­zens in the pipeline of State-owned Paria Lim­it­ed.

“It is un­ac­cept­able that jus­tice or at least part of jus­tice has not been de­liv­ered for these fam­i­lies. We put the ques­tion to the chair­man of the Com­mis­sion—Mr Jerome Lynch King’s Coun­sel—is it that Paria is paralysing the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry through de­lays, in an ef­fort to hide the truth? The Op­po­si­tion is not ques­tion­ing the com­pe­tence of the chair­man and his com­mis­sion, as a mat­ter of fact, we com­mend the pro­fes­sion­al­ism and ded­i­cat­ed man­ner in which the chair­man of the Paria Com­mis­sion of En­quiry King’s Coun­sel Jerome Lynch and his team ex­e­cut­ed the com­mis­sion, but to­day we are call­ing on him to give clar­i­ty to the peo­ple of this na­tion,” Lee said.

Five em­ploy­ees of LM­CS Lim­it­ed were sucked in­to a pipeline at the No 36 Sealine Ris­er on Berth #6 at Paria Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed’s Point-a-Pierre com­pound.

Four of the divers—Yusuf Hen­ry, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Kaz­im Ali and Fyzal Kur­ban died in the pipeline, and their bod­ies were re­cov­ered days lat­er.

In March 2022, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley or­dered that a com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to the tragedy’s events be con­duct­ed.