Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has agreed to meet with the families of LMCS divers, who died in February 2022, tomorrow.
Vanessa Kussie, the widow of diver Rishi Nagassar, delivered a letter to White Hall last Thursday, requesting a meeting with Rowley to seek his help to navigate the challenges they face in rebuilding their lives without their deceased loved ones.
Speaking to reporters following the launch of the Ministry of Youth Development and National Service (MYDNS) and Heritage Petroleum Company’s Industrial-Mechanical Apprenticeship Programme (I-MAP) at the Heritage Industrial Compound, Santa Flora, Rowley said he read about the request in the media and received the letter after. However, he wants to meet the families on Wednesday.
“I have instructed my office today to find them and indicate that I will meet with members of the families on Wednesday if that is convenient to them. So we may meet on Wednesday. They should be advised today,” Rowley said.
Earlier on, Rowley spoke about the successful restructuring of Petrotrin, saying that one of its successors, Paria Fuel Trading Company, makes an average profit of $100-$200 million annually. Asked about the families’ call for Paria to pay compensation for the divers’ deaths, Rowley said these issues are unrelated.
“The company’s success is not dependent on that, and the outcome of that whole issue is not related to what I was talking about. I am talking about the national position of the entities. That was an incident, and when I see them on Wednesday, hopefully, we can clarify one or two things, but I am happy to see them on Wednesday,” he said.
LMCS divers Christopher Boodram, Kazim Ali Jr, Fyzal Kurban, Yusuf Henry and Rishi Nagassar were carrying out subsea maintenance on Paria’s Sealine No36 in the Pointe-a-Pierre Harbour on February 25, 2022. A Delta P event occurred, pulling them into a pipe. Boodram crawled to the top, and rescue divers pulled him out. However, his injured colleagues remained trapped. Paria eventually flushed the divers out of the pipe in the following days. A Commission of Enquiry established to look into the incident found enough evidence to recommend the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to pursue a charge of corporate manslaughter against Paria, noting that it prevented LMCS from rescuing the divers while failing to carry out one itself.