SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion is be­ing rec­om­mend­ed in the Paria div­ing tragedy.

The rec­om­men­da­tion came on Wednes­day morn­ing from at­tor­ney Prakash Ra­mad­har, who rep­re­sents the in­ter­ests of the fam­i­lies of the two of the four vic­tims of the dead­ly ac­ci­dent.

Ra­mad­har was pre­sent­ing his clos­ing ar­gu­ment be­fore the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry set up to in­ves­ti­gate the Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, ac­ci­dent that led to the deaths of Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Yusuf Hen­ry and Kaz­im Ali Ju­nior.

The four were part of a dive team do­ing un­der­wa­ter main­te­nance on a Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed pipeline in Pointe-a-Pierre, when a Delta-P sit­u­a­tion sucked them in­to a 30-inch pipeline.

The Com­mis­sion be­gan in late No­vem­ber 2022, and its re­port is ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered to the Gov­ern­ment by the end of April 2023.

In his clos­ing ar­gu­ment, Ra­mad­har said a clear mes­sage must be sent by the out­come of the En­quiry.

"There are times when a state­ment has to be made that you are not just to hide be­hind cor­po­rate veil and cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, that you are not per­son­al­ly re­spon­si­ble ex­cept when you get a Com­mis­sion and you have to an­swer or a court and you have to an­swer but what­ev­er the de­ci­sion, you are not af­fect­ed, your salary con­tin­ues, but your en­ti­ty pays or the State pays," Ra­mad­har said.

He al­so rec­om­mend­ed that a Na­tion­al Emer­gency Com­mand Cen­tre be es­tab­lished to take over and man­age any such ac­ci­dent in the fu­ture.