Op­po­si­tion MP Rudy In­dars­ingh has called for Gov­ern­ment and the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed’s board to say if the con­tracts of sev­en top Paria of­fi­cials have been re­newed af­ter the 2022 div­ing tragedy.

In­dars­ingh was par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ed in op­er­a­tions man­ag­er Col­in Piper.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing in Port-of-Spain, he cit­ed as­pects of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry’s re­port on the tragedy which led to the deaths of LM­CS divers Kaz­im Ali Jnr, Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry, and Rishi Na­gas­sar. The fifth div­er, Christo­pher Boodram, sur­vived.

In­dars­ingh said if Paria’s board had any de­cen­cy and in­tegri­ty, they would have re­signed im­me­di­ate­ly based on the find­ings in the re­port.

“Or the Prime Min­is­ter and Cab­i­net should have sent them pack­ing!” In­dars­ingh de­clared, ask­ing why the Prime Min­is­ter and Cab­i­net ap­peared to be shield­ing the board.

Not­ing the re­port’s com­ments - in­clud­ing on Piper-and cit­ing “re­li­able in­for­ma­tion com­ing to UNC,” In­dars­ingh added, “We haven’t heard if the con­tracts of Col­in Piper, gen­er­al man­ag­er Mush­taq Mo­hammed, Cather­ine Balkissoon, Michael Wei, Paul Year­wood, Ran­dolph Archibald and Visham Har­richa­ran were re­newed, as they’re all con­tract em­ploy­ees.

“This is two years af­ter the tragedy and in the deaf­en­ing si­lence, we’re call­ing on Paria chair­man New­man George and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to tell us if all the play­ers —whose ac­tion was found to be want­i­ng by the CoE—have had their con­tracts re­newed by Paria. It’s busi­ness as usu­al there, yet there’s not one damned cent for the divers’ fam­i­lies!”

In­dars­ingh queried the re­port’s ref­er­ence to the “dele­tion” of words from an In­ci­dent Brief Form (IBF) by an ex-Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency in­spec­tor, that there was no clear per­son­nel in charge at the res­cue ef­forts be­ing done and no In­ci­dent Com­mon Sys­tem in place.

“Why was this form ‘doc­tored’? Was there a po­lit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy to sup­press the OSH Agency re­port?” In­dars­ingh asked, as he called on the Prime Min­is­ter and Labour Min­is­ter to clear the air.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc Clashie said OS­HA’s process is that an in­spec­tor pro­duces a re­port for con­sid­er­a­tion by the Chief In­spec­tor, who has the right to ask ques­tions, ver­i­fy in­for­ma­tion and if there’s in­ac­cu­ra­cy or omis­sion, will ad­just the re­port ac­cord­ing­ly.

In­dars­ingh de­mand­ed an­swers on the OSH Agency’s fi­nal re­port in­to the divers’ deaths, as the CoE not­ed a pre­lim­i­nary re­port of April 2022 but said it had not seen the fi­nal re­port on the mat­ter.