Mem­bers of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Paria Fu­el div­ing tragedy yes­ter­day of­fi­cial­ly be­gan their busi­ness by de­fend­ing their in­tegri­ty in the face of what has been an ap­par­ent bar­rage of neg­a­tive com­men­tary from the Trinidad and To­ba­go pub­lic on how they per­ceive the CoE will pro­ceed.

Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, the se­nior lead le­gal coun­sel for the Com­mis­sion in­to the deaths of four divers in the tragedy on Feb­ru­ary 25, not­ed the im­par­tial­i­ty and ob­jec­tive­ness of col­leagues Jus­tice Den­nis Mor­ri­son, sub­sea spe­cial­ist Gre­go­ry Wil­son and him­self as they be­gan the ini­tial stages of the process with a me­dia brief­ing.

The trio spoke to the me­dia just af­ter re­ceiv­ing their in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment from Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes.

Jus­tice Mor­ri­son ad­mit­ted that the ques­tion of how long the en­quiry will take must be up­per­most on the minds of the pub­lic but said the process is not one that can be rushed. Jus­tice Mor­ri­son should be aware, how­ev­er, that pa­tience on this mat­ter is run­ning thin. The three-month an­niver­sary since Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Kaz­im Ali Jr lost their lives in a tragedy that touched the hearts of the coun­try is fast ap­proach­ing.

While it is un­der­stand­able that the Jus­tice Mor­ri­son CoE needs the re­quired time to get to the bot­tom of what hap­pened on that fate­ful day, the fam­i­lies of the de­ceased men, lone sur­vivor Christo­pher Boodram, who has in­sist­ed the men could have been res­cued, and the pub­lic needs an­swers.

Jus­tice Mor­ri­son said he was hope­ful pro­ce­dur­al hear­ings in­to the mat­ter would be­gin in Au­gust. There is, how­ev­er, no guar­an­tee this will hap­pen.

Iron­i­cal­ly, on the very same day the com­mis­sion­ers be­gan their work, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­lies of Hen­ry and Kur­ban filed pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters against Paria Fu­el and LM­SC lim­it­ed seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion. The two com­pa­nies at the cen­tre of this tragedy have 21 days to re­spond as to whether they ac­cept li­a­bil­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to at­tor­ney Prakash Ra­mad­har. The fam­i­lies al­so plan to take le­gal ac­tion against the T&T Coast Guard.

There is no doubt these fam­i­lies are suf­fer­ing and the fact that no one has been held ac­count­able and its busi­ness as usu­al at both Paria and LM­CS must add to their pain. To them, it may well ap­pear no one cared that their loved ones lost their lives and to this day, they still have no an­swers on why so lit­tle seemed to have been done to save them.

Jus­tice Mor­ri­son must thus un­der­stand that the T&T pub­lic is scep­ti­cal and as more time pass­es, fam­i­lies are al­so los­ing hope that they will ever get re­al an­swers or jus­tice, far less some kind of rea­son­able com­pen­sa­tion.

This can­not be a case of jus­tice de­layed is jus­tice de­nied. What hap­pened on that site must nev­er oc­cur again and this CoE must en­sure the mat­ter is prop­er­ly probed, prop­er process­es are put in place to deal with fu­ture is­sues of this mag­ni­tude and that noth­ing is left to chance ever again.

But more than that, the fam­i­lies must get the re­al sto­ry of what hap­pened, the even­tu­al re­port must not be al­lowed to gath­er dust and if any­one is found li­able, they must be held to ac­count.