Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The lone sur­vivor in the Paria div­ing tragedy Christo­pher Boodram and Vanes­sa Kussie, the wife of one of the divers who was killed, are call­ing for Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny of­fi­cials to face the full brunt of the law.

While Boodram called for them to be fired and charged, Kussie said they should be jailed for their ac­tions.

They made their rec­om­men­da­tions yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) re­port in­to the Paria in­ci­dent that claimed the lives of four divers al­most two years ago.

The re­port was laid by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young on Fri­day and has since been for­ward­ed to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard fol­low­ing a rec­om­men­da­tion that Paria be charged with cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter. Le­gal ex­perts told Guardian Me­dia, how­ev­er, that the charge of cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter is against a com­pa­ny, not an in­di­vid­ual, and the penal­ty is a fine.

The CoE was launched fol­low­ing the deaths of divers Rishi Na­gas­sar, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Fyzal Kur­ban, and Yusuf Hen­ry in the in­ci­dent on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022. Boodram was the on­ly one who sur­vived.

The five divers, all LM­CS em­ploy­ees, were sucked in­to a 30-inch un­der­wa­ter pipeline while con­duct­ing main­te­nance works at Berth No 6 in the Pointe-a-Pierre har­bour.

In an in­ter­view at her Cou­va home yes­ter­day, Kussie, the coun­cil­lor for Cou­va West/Roys­to­nia, could not hold back the tears.

She said it was un­fair that the divers’ fam­i­lies have to wait so long to get jus­tice. “It sad that it has to reach so far, al­most two years we have to wait, it is sad. It says a lot.”

Ap­plaud­ing CoE chair­man Jerome Lynch, KC, on the re­port, Kussie was hope­ful that the DPP would give the fam­i­lies jus­tice. “I saw that the re­port had stat­ed that manslaugh­ter and I think that it’s true, they should be charged with mur­der. I was there from the be­gin­ning and I saw Paria do noth­ing, ab­solute­ly noth­ing to help save our hus­bands. They just left them there to die. They had the coast­guard point­ing guns at the oth­er divers who were will­ing to go down and res­cue them. A lot more could have been done.”

Hop­ing that the DPP would give his de­ci­sion in a month, she said: “I re­al­ly do ex­pect that who­ev­er is re­spon­si­ble is held ac­count­able for their ac­tions. Some­body has to make jail.”

She added that nei­ther the Gov­ern­ment nor Paria did any­thing to help the fam­i­lies. “They turned their back on us. We got noth­ing. It is a strug­gle we had to face to pay bills, every sin­gle thing; to go to the gro­cery, to go to the mar­ket. It was a big strug­gle for me,” she lament­ed.

Boodram, his wife and two chil­dren were prepar­ing for a prayer ser­vice at their Clax­ton Bay home when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed them.

While he be­lieves the re­port was fair and jus­ti­fied, Boodram said his for­mer boss LM­CS own­er Kaz­im Ali Snr should not be pun­ished.

The com­mis­sion­ers had not­ed that there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence for the pros­e­cu­tion of Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny’s Op­er­a­tions man­ag­er Col­in Piper and Ali for a num­ber of of­fences un­der the OSH Act.

Boodram said: “Be­cause Mr Kaz­im Ali Snr has been through a lot with los­ing his son al­so, and for the record, yes­ter­day was his birth­day. I be­lieve that he had suf­fered enough and went through a lot in terms of phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly, so my heart still goes out to his whole fam­i­ly.”

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, he said Paria man­age­ment should have been sus­pend­ed, but he is now call­ing on them to be fired.

“I think they should lose their jobs, at least. At least the peo­ple who made the de­ci­sion of not send­ing or pro­hibit­ing dive res­cue, they should lose their job im­me­di­ate­ly,” said Boodram.

Agree­ing with the com­mis­sion­ers’ rec­om­men­da­tion for the in­tro­duc­tion of com­pul­so­ry reg­u­la­tion of all com­mer­cial div­ing op­er­a­tions, he said: “That is most need­ed in the ma­rine and sub­sea in­dus­try. Af­ter skim­ming through the re­port, I be­lieve Paria in go­ing for­ward needs to im­ple­ment the things that were rec­om­mend­ed, not on­ly Paria, all in­dus­tries.”

He was al­so pleased that the com­mis­sion­ers men­tioned putting in place an im­me­di­ate al­lowance to as­sist fam­i­lies who lose loved ones in trag­ic cir­cum­stances. “It is very im­por­tant be­cause the strug­gle is re­al. In two years, it has been tough for me,” he said.

Mean­while, Hen­ry’s moth­er, Nicole Greenidge, al­so wants jus­tice. She said the re­port was bit­ter-sweet be­cause the of­fences men­tioned in the re­port were not jail­able of­fences, and the fam­i­lies were no clos­er to get­ting any fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance.

“I don’t have con­fi­dence that things will re­al­ly work out in the fam­i­ly’s favour un­less we have the mon­ey to take the mat­ter af­ter from the DPP to fur­ther this is­sue in court to get some kind of jus­tice. I think they are mak­ing it very com­pli­cat­ed and hard for the fam­i­ly,” she lament­ed.

She said the fam­i­lies have been “lit­er­al­ly drag­ging” as they lost their bread­win­ners, and it has al­so been dif­fi­cult for her since she has been help­ing Hen­ry’s chil­dren. While com­pen­sa­tion will not take away their hurt, she said it would as­sist in sup­port­ing the fam­i­lies. “I would like to see the fam­i­lies get some kind of com­pen­sa­tion, at least that way they could move on,” she said.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the homes of Kur­ban and Ali Snr, they did not meet any­one.