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Tuesday, June 17, 2025

No celebration for Pete Phillip's widow this Mother’s Day

by

38 days ago
20250510
Candacy Phillip, the wife of rig worker Pete Phillip, kisses her two-month-old baby, Jevon, at their  La Romain home yesterday. Also in the photo are her sons Josiah, left, and Justin.

Candacy Phillip, the wife of rig worker Pete Phillip, kisses her two-month-old baby, Jevon, at their La Romain home yesterday. Also in the photo are her sons Josiah, left, and Justin.

RISHI RAGOONATH

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter 

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

For Can­da­cy Phillip, the wife of de­ceased rig work­er Pe­te Phillip, there will be no cel­e­bra­tion on Moth­er’s Day to­mor­row.

While her five chil­dren bring her joy, the weight of loss is heavy, as her hus­band’s body still lies un­re­cov­ered in the sea, al­most five months af­ter Well Ser­vices Rig 110 col­lapsed and plunged him in­to the wa­ter.

Can­da­cy said while the com­pa­ny had been pro­vid­ing sup­port to her and their five chil­dren, the ab­sence of clo­sure con­tin­ued to be emo­tion­al­ly dif­fi­cult for the fam­i­ly.

On March 7, Well Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny stat­ed that re­cov­ery ef­forts had been de­layed due to strict in­sur­ance and con­trac­tor re­quire­ments.

Can­da­cy said last Thurs­day that they con­firmed in­sur­ance un­der­writ­ers had ap­proved the set­tle­ment and re­lease agree­ment. How­ev­er, she said no date had been giv­en for when op­er­a­tions to re­trieve her hus­band’s re­mains would restart.

Mean­while, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, in a What­sApp mes­sage, stat­ed that he in­tend­ed to con­tact the com­pa­ny for an up­date on this mat­ter, but he did not in­di­cate how soon. 

Wel­com­ing any as­sis­tance to get clo­sure, she said, “That will be nice to get some clo­sure at last for me and the fam­i­ly be­cause every­body is hurt­ing.”

Since the in­ci­dent, she said, there had been so many spe­cial fam­i­ly mo­ments that her hus­band would have been in­volved in, in­clud­ing the birth of their fifth child, Jevon Pe­te Phillip, on Feb­ru­ary 23, and their two oth­er sons writ­ing the Sec­ondary En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion. Phillip has an­oth­er son from a pre­vi­ous re­la­tion­ship who is writ­ing the CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions.

She said Moth­er’s Day would be dif­fi­cult, but as her chil­dren’s on­ly par­ent, she knew that she had to be strong for them.

“He miss every­thing. Moth­er’s Day com­ing up, no cel­e­bra­tion. Moth­er’s Day usu­al­ly we will go the beach. Some­times he will buy gifts, clothes. Some­times we go din­ner.”

How­ev­er, she was thank­ful that she would be sur­round­ed by her chil­dren.

She said the com­pa­ny had been as­sist­ing her fi­nan­cial­ly and would be as­sist­ing in ren­o­vat­ing her home, which her hus­band had planned to do.

Phillip was among 75 per­son­nel aboard Well Ser­vices Rig 110 in Her­itage Off­shore East Field on De­cem­ber 22, when, around 3.09 am, it par­tial­ly col­lapsed. Phillip was un­ac­count­ed for while one per­son was in­jured. On De­cem­ber 26, Well Ser­vices is­sued an up­date stat­ing that ef­forts have been tran­si­tioned from search and res­cue op­er­a­tions to a search and re­cov­ery phase.


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