KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The fam­i­lies of three LM­CS divers who died at the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny in Feb­ru­ary 2022 are not wor­ried by the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Paria/ LM­CS div­ing tragedy’s de­lay in sub­mit­ting its re­port.

Dur­ing the ev­i­den­tial hear­ings in Jan­u­ary, CoE Chair­man Jerome Lynch KC com­mit­ted to de­liv­er­ing a re­port to the State by the end of May. Af­ter ex­am­in­ing the LM­CS hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber at the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny in Pointe-a-Pierre last week, Lynch ad­mit­ted lo­gis­ti­cal is­sues caused a de­lay but said they would play catchup to de­liv­er the re­port in time. But on Sat­ur­day, the CoE post­poned the de­liv­ery to May, say­ing the law al­so man­dat­ed the CoE to is­sue Salmon let­ters to par­ties who its re­port would af­fect. The CoE will al­so al­low these par­ties to make oral sub­mis­sions in an in-cam­era hear­ing on the lev­el of the crit­i­cism of their roles in the in­ci­dents on and around Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022.

That day, LM­CS divers Christo­pher Boodram, Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Yusuf Hen­ry and Rishi Na­gas­sar, were per­form­ing sub­sea main­te­nance of Paria’s Sealine No.36 ris­er at Berth No.5 in the Pointe-a-Pierre har­bour.

The divers at­tempt­ed to re­move an in­flat­able plug, which trig­gered a Delta P event, flood­ing the cham­ber they worked in and flush­ing them in­to the 30-inch oil line. Boodram dragged him­self and swam back to the cham­ber, where oth­er col­leagues res­cued him. How­ev­er, Kur­ban, Ali Jr, Hen­ry and Na­gas­sar died while await­ing help that nev­er came.

While the fam­i­lies an­tic­i­pate the re­port, Na­gas­sar’s wife, Vanes­sa Kussie, said a few weeks’ de­lay in de­liv­er­ing the re­port would not af­fect her.

“If we can wait so far, and if they want two or three weeks again, let it be. Prob­a­bly they have to do what­ev­er pa­per­work that needs to be done. Prob­a­bly they are be­hind time, and if they need that time, it is on­ly fair that we give it to them,” Kussie said.

She said peo­ple should re­mem­ber that the divers died be­cause they wait­ed for a res­cue that nev­er came. Call­ing it mur­der, she said, the CoE would have to de­ter­mine what ac­ci­dent hap­pened, who caused it, who sealed the pipe and who stopped the res­cues.

At­tor­ney Prakash Ra­mad­har, who rep­re­sents the fam­i­lies of Kur­ban and Hen­ry, ex­pressed a bit of dis­ap­point­ment.

How­ev­er, Ra­mad­har said he ap­pre­ci­ates the work done by the CoE. He be­lieves that what­ev­er time it takes will be best used to bet­ter the re­port for the coun­try. 

“Let me just say that we were in­ter­est­ed in the re­port that should come out. How­ev­er, our po­si­tion in re­la­tion to rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­lies is that the mat­ter will ul­ti­mate­ly be dealt with in court. The court can make or­ders in terms of reme­dies and dam­ages that the fam­i­lies may be en­ti­tled to,” Ra­mad­har said.