The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) is giv­ing Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny one week to dis­miss its gen­er­al man­ag­er, Mush­taq Mo­hammed, and man­age­ment mem­bers of the In­ci­dent Com­mand Team (ICT), who re­spond­ed to the 2022 in­ci­dent which even­tu­al­ly led to the deaths of four LM­CS divers.Dur­ing a protest at Paria’s en­trance in Pointe-a-Pierre yes­ter­day, OW­TU branch pres­i­dent Christo­pher Jack­man called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to act swift­ly and re­move the man­age­ment team and the Board of Di­rec­tors. Row­ley told re­porters on Mon­day that the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry has re­port­ed and it was avail­able to the pub­lic.

But Jack­man said the board and ICT should not wait to be fired and do the ho­n­ourable thing. How­ev­er, he has lit­tle faith, as they have re­mained in their po­si­tion since the in­ci­dent. The OW­TU al­so de­mand­ed that Paria ini­ti­ate dis­cus­sions with the divers’ fam­i­lies re­gard­ing com­pen­sa­tion.
Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed divers Christo­pher Boodram, Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Yusuf Hen­ry, and Rishi Na­gas­sar were car­ry­ing out sub­sea main­te­nance on Paria’s Sealine No. 36 in the Pointe-a-Pierre har­bour on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, when a Delta P event sucked them in­to the pipeline. Boodram swam to a hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber, where res­cue divers pulled him out.

How­ev­er, Paria pre­vent­ed the com­pa­ny from en­ter­ing the pipeline to res­cue the oth­ers, de­spite Boodram in­di­cat­ing they were alive. In the fol­low­ing days, Paria flushed the div­er’s body from the pipe.
“We want to give Paria no­tice: one week to es­tab­lish con­tact with each and every one of the fam­i­ly mem­bers to have dis­cus­sions on com­pen­sa­tion. Should the fam­i­lies not be con­tact­ed with­in a week, we will be right back here with larg­er num­bers to en­sure our mes­sage is de­liv­ered.

“Sec­ond­ly, it is our opin­ion that the man­age­ment team needs to do the right thing and re­sign,” Jack­man said.
Kur­ban’s wid­ow, Cel­isha; Na­gas­sar’s wid­ow, Vanes­sa Kussie; and Ali’s par­ents, Cather­ine and Kaz­im Ali Snr, par­tic­i­pat­ed in the protest. Jack­man said the union stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the be­reaved fam­i­lies. He said since the tragedy, the State spent al­most $16 mil­lion on the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE), and the fam­i­lies have not re­ceived any as­sis­tance.

Kussie con­firmed that Paria had not con­tact­ed rel­a­tives since the in­ci­dent. Jack­man warned that the OW­TU has the con­nec­tions and links and will do what is nec­es­sary to make this a na­tion­al is­sue again, whether it in­volves Car­ni­val or an elec­tion.

De­spite heav­i­ly armed po­lice of­fi­cers look­ing over the protest, Jack­man said they were not in­tim­i­dat­ed and be­lieved the of­fi­cers ac­tu­al­ly sup­port­ed their protest.
Pointe-a-Pierre MP David Lee, who joined the union and rel­a­tives, said it would be a tragedy if the di­rec­tors and top man­age­ment re­mained in their po­si­tions fol­low­ing the re­lease of the CoE re­port. Lee said there was a call for top man­age­ment to pro­ceed on leave dur­ing the CoE, but now the call is for their re­moval.
“It can­not be that busi­ness will con­tin­ue as nor­mal af­ter this 500-page re­port was re­leased in Par­lia­ment by Com­mis­sion­er (Jerome) Lynch. Even the Prime Min­is­ter laid the re­port in Par­lia­ment. Af­ter read­ing that re­port, it can­not be busi­ness as usu­al, and heads must roll as a min­i­mum,” Lee said.

He added he sup­port­ed calls for com­pen­sa­tion for the fam­i­lies and Boodram. With the mem­o­ry of how the in­ci­dent un­fold­ed and how Paria han­dled it, Lee said he was not con­fi­dent about the com­pa­ny’s re­sponse should an­oth­er ma­jor event oc­cur. He ques­tioned what steps of­fi­cials took to in­crease safe­ty at the com­pa­ny, in­clud­ing train­ing work­ers.
“I am not con­fi­dent be­cause noth­ing has changed in the last 18 months that the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry was go­ing on,” Lee said.