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Friday, July 25, 2025

Just resolution needed in Paria diving tragedy matter

by

358 days ago
20240801

Al­most eight months af­ter the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry re­port in­to the Paria Fu­el div­ing tragedy was de­liv­ered to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, there have been some de­vel­op­ments in this slow-mov­ing mat­ter that cap­tured the pub­lic's at­ten­tion at the end of Feb­ru­ary 2022.

Two years and five months ago, four divers em­ployed by Land and Ma­rine Con­struc­tion Ser­vices (LM­SC), were night­mar­ish­ly trapped in­side a 30-inch Paria Fu­el Trad­ing pipeline in the Pointe-a-Pierre har­bour and died. A fifth div­er, Christo­pher Boodram, es­caped, but is no doubt liv­ing with unimag­in­able psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma.

This week, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard has de­ter­mined a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion should be con­duct­ed to es­tab­lish whether there is enough ev­i­dence to charge Paria with manslaugh­ter by gross neg­li­gence. The Com­mis­sion of En­quiry had rec­om­mend­ed to the DPP that there were suf­fi­cient grounds to con­clude that Paria's ac­tions could be "char­ac­terised as gross neg­li­gence." It did not con­clude the same was true of LM­CS, as the com­mis­sion was of the view that com­pa­ny was "ef­fec­tive­ly pre­vent­ed from pur­su­ing a res­cue by Paria."

As a re­sult of the DPP's di­rec­tions, a T&T Po­lice Ser­vice in­ves­ti­ga­tor has been se­lect­ed to probe this com­plex mat­ter. Giv­en the track record of the T&TPS in in­ves­ti­gat­ing large and com­pli­cat­ed mat­ters—such as the Pi­ar­co Air­port cor­rup­tion case and the the col­lapse of Cli­co and the Hin­du Cred­it Union—there should not be too much op­ti­mism of progress on that front soon.

More promis­ing is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a civ­il set­tle­ment, with at­tor­ney Prakash Ra­mad­har re­veal­ing his clients are pre­pared to ac­cept an ex-gra­tia pay­ment of $5 mil­lion as full and fi­nal set­tle­ment of all claims against LM­CS and Paria.

It is use­ful that Ra­mad­har gave ex­am­ples of two lo­cal cas­es in which the courts de­cid­ed on $25,000 awards for the loss of ex­pec­ta­tion of life. That at­tach­es some con­text to the fam­i­ly mem­ber of one of the de­ceased say­ing she is pre­pared to ac­cept $5 mil­lion.

There is no doubt the fam­i­lies of the men who died and the sur­vivor de­serve some kind of mon­e­tary set­tle­ment. That is be­cause at its core, the Paria div­ing tragedy is about five fam­i­lies whose lives have been torn apart by the deaths of four bread­win­ners and the suf­fer­ing of the fifth sur­vivor.

But a civ­il set­tle­ment should be fair and rea­son­able to all par­ties con­cerned, es­pe­cial­ly as an out-of-court, ne­go­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment is like­ly to be viewed as a prece­dent for all cas­es of wrong­ful, on-the-job deaths in the fu­ture.

In the US, such set­tle­ments nor­mal­ly come with bind­ing non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments (NDAs) and with the com­pa­nies not ad­mit­ting any li­a­bil­i­ty.

It is an, as yet, un­re­solved is­sue whether a whol­ly state-owned com­pa­ny can sign NDAs, giv­en the T&T pub­lic's right to know the de­tails of how com­pa­nies owned by tax­pay­ers spend pub­lic mon­ey and our Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.

As im­por­tant as the pos­si­ble set­tle­ment is, it pales in com­par­i­son to the fact that cor­po­rate T&T must learn from the Feb­ru­ary 2022 in­ci­dent. It is hoped that the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry re­port was manda­to­ry read­ing for all health and safe­ty of­fi­cers in com­pa­nies across T&T. While few com­pa­nies en­gage in prac­tices that are as in­her­ent­ly dan­ger­ous as un­der­wa­ter div­ing in a 30-inch pipeline, there is much in the re­port that speaks to process­es and pro­ce­dures that must be fol­lowed, with the ap­pro­pri­ate over­sight and checks and bal­ances.


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