Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny has failed in its bid to ex­tract it­self from Work­men’s Com­pen­sa­tion Act claims brought on be­half of two vic­tims of a div­ing tragedy at its Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty in 2022. 

De­liv­er­ing a pre­lim­i­nary rul­ing on Tues­day, High Court Mas­ter Wren­er­son Lochan dis­missed an ap­pli­ca­tion from the state-owned com­pa­ny to re­move it­self as a par­ty to the pend­ing pro­ceed­ings brought on be­half of Fyzal Kur­ban and Yusuf Hen­ry. 

Paria was or­dered to pay the le­gal costs in­curred by the duo’s for­mer em­ploy­er, Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (LM­CS), for de­fend­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that lawyers for the duo’s fam­i­lies, Prakash Ra­mad­har and Saira Lakhan, filed the claims ear­li­er this year while they were con­tin­u­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with Paria’s of­fi­cials over pos­si­bly set­tling sub­stan­tive com­pen­sa­tion claims over neg­li­gence in their deaths. 

The leg­is­la­tion pro­vides for com­pen­sa­tion to be paid to work­ers or their fam­i­lies if they die or are left per­ma­nent­ly dis­abled dur­ing an in­ci­dent while work­ing. Claims are not de­pen­dent on the em­ploy­er be­ing found neg­li­gent in re­la­tion to the in­jury or on an em­ploy­ee be­ing found to have con­tributed to their in­jury. 

In cas­es where a dead work­man leaves be­hind de­pen­dents who were whol­ly de­pen­dent on his earn­ings, the em­ploy­er is re­quired to pay a lump sum of 36 months’ earn­ings. 

The ju­di­cial of­fi­cers would as­sess an ap­pro­pri­ate por­tion of the max­i­mum amount if the dead work­man does not have any de­pen­dants or if his/her de­pen­dants were not whol­ly de­pen­dent on him/her. 

Work­ers who sur­vive but are left to­tal­ly or par­tial­ly dis­abled can po­ten­tial­ly re­ceive a larg­er pay­out based on their de­pen­dents and the ex­tent of their dis­abil­i­ty. 

On Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, divers Hen­ry, Kur­ban, Christo­pher Boodram, Rishi Na­gas­sar, and Kaz­im Ali Jr, whose fa­ther owns LM­CS, were sucked in­to the 30-inch-di­am­e­ter pipeline they were per­form­ing main­te­nance work at Paria’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty. 

All were se­ri­ous­ly in­jured, but Boodram man­aged to make his way to the en­trance of the pipeline and was res­cued.

LM­CS of­fi­cials were blocked from at­tempt­ing to res­cue their col­leagues. 

Three of the divers’ bod­ies were re­cov­ered on Feb­ru­ary 28, while Na­gas­sar’s was re­cov­ered the fol­low­ing day. 

The cab­i­net ini­tial­ly ap­point­ed a five-mem­ber team to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent, but even­tu­al­ly ap­point­ed a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) due to pub­lic crit­i­cism. 

In its re­port, the com­mis­sion, chaired by King’s Coun­sel Jerome Lynch, pre­sent­ed sev­er­al dozen rec­om­men­da­tions, in­clud­ing charges un­der the OSH Act. 

Last year, Paria’s for­mer gen­er­al man­ag­er, Mush­taq Mo­hammed; its ter­mi­nal op­er­a­tions man­ag­er, Collin Piper; LM­CS di­rec­tor Kaz­im Ali Snr; and the com­pa­ny were slapped with a se­ries of charges un­der the OSH Act.  

A mag­is­trate is ex­pect­ed to rule on the fu­ture of the charges next month, as they were filed be­fore the Privy Coun­cil de­ter­mined a land­mark case over the time lim­it for bring­ing such pros­e­cu­tions. 

Last year, LM­CS’s le­gal team, led by at­tor­ney Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, wrote to lawyers for Boodram and his de­ceased col­leagues’ fam­i­lies, sug­gest­ing that they should di­rect their le­gal ac­tion for neg­li­gence to Paria. 

LM­CS’s lawyers dis­missed any im­pu­ta­tion of cul­pa­bil­i­ty at­tached to it by the com­mis­sion and claimed that Paria should be held sole­ly li­able for what tran­spired. 

They sug­gest­ed that even if their clients were par­tial­ly re­spon­si­ble for the ini­tial ac­ci­dent, as al­leged, Paria’s han­dling of the re­sponse ab­solved them. 

LM­CS did ad­mit that they owe their work­ers’ fam­i­lies and Boodram com­pen­sa­tion un­der the Work­men’s Com­pen­sa­tion Act, but claimed that pay­ments could not be made un­til its claim to its in­sur­er is de­ter­mined. 

The com­pa­ny claimed that it pur­sued lit­i­ga­tion over the is­sue af­ter it made a claim short­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent, but did not re­ceive a re­sponse.  

In Oc­to­ber last year, Boodram and Na­gas­sar’s fam­i­ly filed neg­li­gence law­suits against Paria and LM­CS. 

Kur­ban and Hen­ry’s fam­i­lies were ex­pect­ed to do the same, but opt­ed to con­tin­ue ne­go­ti­a­tions to avoid lengthy and cost­ly lit­i­ga­tion.  

In ear­ly April, for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced that the Cab­i­net had de­cid­ed to make a one-time ex gra­tia pay­ment of $1 mil­lion each to Boodram and his col­leagues’ fam­i­lies with­out ad­mit­ting li­a­bil­i­ty. 

He claimed that the de­lay in the set­tle­ment of the cas­es was due to in­sur­ers for LM­CS and Paria dis­agree­ing on which com­pa­ny was li­able. 

How­ev­er, the pay­ments were not made when there was a change of gov­ern­ment at the end of April. 

While speak­ing to re­porters at the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny for her Cab­i­net, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar promised that her gov­ern­ment would seek to as­sist the fam­i­lies, but not­ed that com­pen­sa­tion was a com­pli­cat­ed le­gal is­sue which would take time to ad­dress.