SHARLENE RAMPERSAD
“Leaving a fox in charge of the henhouse.” That was how Commission of Enquiry chairman, King’s Counsel, Jerome Lynch, summed up how Paria Fuel Trading Company Limited monitored the job being done by contractor LMCS on February 25.
Lynch was putting questions to Paria’s Operations Team supervisor, Johnathan Ramdhan, who was in charge of the operations at Berth 6 in Pointe-a-Pierre on the day of the deadly accident.
Four LMCS divers, Kazim Ali Jnr, Rishi Nagassar, Fyzal Kurban and Yusuf Henry, lost their lives when they were sucked into a 30-inch pipeline that day. A fifth diver, Christopher Boodram, who was also sucked into the pipe, survived.
Ramdhan was grilled on Tuesday about his role as operations teams supervisor.
He was adamant that no one from Paria was looking at the screens set up in the underwater habitat to monitor the divers.
Ramdhan said this responsibility lay with the contractor.
Lynch asked him several times how he would know if the contractor’s employees were adhering to the work permit issued by Paria.
“Do you monitor it at all? Keep any eye on it, or do you just let them get on with it and if it goes wrong, too bad? Or are you keeping any watchful eye or any oversight on the work at all?” Lynch asked.
Ramdhan repeated his previous answer, saying it was the duty of the contractor.
Lynch then asked how Ramdhan would know if a permit should be pulled.
“You are saying that if the contractor goes wrong, there is no mechanism, as far as you can tell me, to stop the contractor from going wrong?” Lynch asked.
Ramdhan again repeated his answer, saying, “No, what I am saying is the contractor official has a duty and responsibility.”
But Lynch then cut him off, saying, “I get that, what you are saying, you want to put a fox in charge of the henhouse.”
The chairman said if a contractor was acting out of his job scope, there would be no one to stop that work because there was no oversight.
He asked Ramdhan whether Paria was considering any change to its monitoring system.
"Yes, I guess it merits some change, everything is not perfect and it changes over time," Ramdhan said.
He was also asked by the commission's counsel, senior counsel Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj about his process for approving the method statement presented by LMCS on the day of the accident.
However, Ramdhan said Paria's process was that he, as site supervisor, would accept a document as presented by an approved applicant.
He explained that this means the document would have been checked by Paria's technical, maintenance and HSE teams before being approved.