SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

In the af­ter­math of the dead­ly Paria div­ing tragedy, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed did an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, as­sess­ing the in­ci­dent.

But in the end, that re­port con­tained on­ly two rec­om­men­da­tions and nei­ther spoke to iden­ti­fy­ing Delta P haz­ards in up­com­ing jobs.

In­stead, the re­port rec­om­mend­ed that Paria re­train all out­side con­trac­tors on its per­mit-to-work sys­tem.

This from tes­ti­mo­ny giv­en dur­ing the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the tragedy by Paria’s gen­er­al man­ag­er, Mush­taq Mo­hammed on Wednes­day.

He was be­ing cross-ex­am­ined by Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union rep­re­sen­ta­tive, at­tor­ney Asif Ho­sein-Shah, when the at­tor­ney point­ed out that there were on­ly two rec­om­men­da­tions in the re­port.

The com­mis­sion’s chair­man, King’s Coun­sel, Jerome Lynch, in­ter­ject­ed, say­ing the two rec­om­men­da­tions were “short” by at least the sug­ges­tion to check for Delta P haz­ards in fu­ture jobs.

Ho­sein-Shah then asked Mo­hammed whether Paria had done any in­ves­ti­ga­tion or as­sess­ment in­to its re­sponse to the trag­ic ac­ci­dent.

“Those things would be looked at thor­ough­ly and a lot of ef­fort went in­to prepar­ing for the CoE, which we al­so have a lot of lessons to learn from,” Mo­hammed said.

Asked to com­mit to a time­frame to com­plete that in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Mo­hammed said he could not do so at that mo­ment.

“If the com­mis­sion so would like it in writ­ing, I would do that,” Mo­hammed said.

But Lynch shot back, say­ing, “I sus­pect we will have our re­port be­fore you have yours.”

Ho­sein-Shah al­so asked Mo­hammed about what type of sup­port had been giv­en to the divers’ fam­i­lies.

Mo­hammed said Paria was try­ing to as­sist the fam­i­lies un­til the com­pa­ny was sent le­gal let­ters on March 21 ask­ing it to de­sist from con­tact­ing the fam­i­lies.

He said Paria was open to pro­vid­ing all the sup­port it could to the fam­i­lies.

Mo­hammed said the com­pa­ny want­ed to pro­vide coun­sel­ing to the fam­i­lies in the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math of the tragedy and pro­vide “ne­ces­si­ties.”

But Ho­sein-Shah con­tra­dict­ed Mo­hammed’s state­ment to the com­mis­sion, which stat­ed Paria of­fered sup­port in the form of gro­ceries and Massy gift cards.

“Those are the things that they would need to keep them go­ing,” Mo­hammed said.

Asked if he felt those were suf­fi­cient, Mo­hammed said, “I think it was a start and we were will­ing to en­gage with the fam­i­lies fur­ther un­til we were put to a stop.”

When Ho­sein-Shah tried to ask whether Paria was still will­ing to as­sist the fam­i­lies, Lynch stopped him, say­ing those ques­tions were out of the am­bit of the en­quiry.

The en­quiry is con­tin­u­ing to­day.