Chair­man of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the deaths of four divers at the Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny, Jerome Lynch, QC, is plead­ing with the pub­lic to be more pa­tient.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence at the South­ern Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) in San Fer­nan­do, Lynch an­nounced that CoE’s first day would be Sep­tem­ber 7, with a hear­ing be­gin­ning at 10.30 am. Lynch said he hopes the com­mis­sion will be able to set out what it has achieved so far, where it is go­ing and set dates for every­one to at­tend the CoE.

“I ask you, the pub­lic, for one thing—please, be a lit­tle bit more pa­tient with us. I have on­ly just been com­mis­sioned to con­duct this en­quiry, and as I have said, I start my work to­day. But there is much to be done and I am not go­ing to hur­ry it. We all want this to be a thor­ough and com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis of what went wrong. That is what we will achieve,” Lynch, who was sworn in on Wednes­day as a re­place­ment for pre­vi­ous chair Sir Den­nis Mor­ri­son, said.

At the me­dia con­fer­ence called to in­tro­duce him­self and up­date the pub­lic on the com­mis­sion’s progress since tak­ing oath on April 22, Lynch re­vealed he was a div­er for many years. He said he par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al Co­Es dur­ing his ca­reer but it was his first time as a chair­man. Al­though he leaves T&T to­mor­row, he will con­tin­ue to work re­mote­ly un­til re­turn­ing in Sep­tem­ber.

The Gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed the CoE to in­ves­ti­gate the deaths of LCMS divers Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Yusuf Hen­ry and Rishi Na­gas­sar, while they were car­ry­ing out un­der­wa­ter main­te­nance in a 30-inch pipeline at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny in Pointe-a-Pierre on Feb­ru­ary 25.

The CoE seeks to as­cer­tain the facts and cir­cum­stances that led to the deaths, whether Paria and LCMS had any life-sav­ing con­tin­gency plans if life-threat­en­ing in­ci­dents oc­curred, and if the com­pa­nies had con­tin­gency plans, whether they em­ployed them in re­sponse to the in­ci­dent. The CoE al­so seeks to de­ter­mine if there were suf­fi­cient safe­guards and mea­sures to en­sure the safe­ty of the con­tract­ed em­ploy­ees, in­ci­dent pre­ven­tion and res­cue the divers.

Lead coun­sel for the com­mis­sion, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, the com­mis­sion will make find­ings, ob­ser­va­tions and rec­om­men­da­tions from de­lib­er­a­tions to de­ter­mine whether there was any breach of du­ty by any per­son or en­ti­ty, grounds for crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings and if they should be rec­om­mend­ed for con­sid­er­a­tion by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

Apart from that, the com­mis­sion will share its find­ings on the ap­pro­pri­ate prac­tices, poli­cies and pro­ce­dures that com­pa­nies like Paria and LCMS should utilise for sim­i­lar main­te­nance ex­er­cis­es.

“The Com­mis­sion of En­quiry has very im­por­tant du­ties to un­cov­er the truth of how these trag­ic deaths oc­curred and to make rec­om­men­da­tions which would have the ef­fect of sav­ing lives in the fu­ture,” Ma­haraj said.

He ex­plained that be­fore the CoE can be­gin pub­lic hear­ings, it has to in­ves­ti­gate, in­ter­view wit­ness­es, pre­pare state­ments and ac­cu­mu­late rel­e­vant doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence. Ma­haraj said the com­mis­sion will pub­lish pub­lic no­tices on its web­site and in the me­dia in the next sev­en to 10 days, invit­ing peo­ple with per­ti­nent ev­i­dence to sub­mit state­ments and doc­u­ments. It will then de­ter­mine which sub­mis­sions are rel­e­vant in the con­text of the terms of ref­er­ence of the CoE.

The sec­re­tari­at will in­ter­view and record wit­ness ac­counts. The com­mis­sion will al­so is­sue 29 let­ters to peo­ple, en­ti­ties and in­ter­est­ed par­ties such as Paria, LCMS and the T&T Coast Guard to sub­mit ev­i­dence, state­ments and doc­u­ments.