SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Ah­mad Ali, the HSSE man­ag­er for LM­CS Lim­it­ed, says when he ar­rived on Berth 6 on Feb­ru­ary 25, he saw no one pre­vent­ing any res­cue at­tempts.

Ah­mad, who is the nephew of LM­CS own­er Kaz­im Ali Se­nior, is tes­ti­fy­ing be­fore the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry set up to in­ves­ti­gate the dead­ly ac­ci­dent.

Ah­mad’s cousin, Kaz­im Ali Jnr and three of his col­leagues, Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Yusuf Hen­ry lost their lives in the ac­ci­dent.

The lone sur­vivor, Christo­pher Boodram, has al­ready tes­ti­fied be­fore the En­quiry and has been at­tend­ing the hear­ings since.

On Tues­day morn­ing, Ah­mad was asked by Paria’s at­tor­ney at the En­quiry se­nior coun­sel Gilbert Pe­ter­son about his wit­ness state­ments to Com­mis­sion be­fore the hear­ings start­ed.

Pe­ter­son asked Ah­mad about what he saw when he got to Berth 6  around 7 pm on Feb­ru­ary 25th.

Ah­mad had pre­vi­ous­ly said he did not see any­one div­ing when he ar­rived nor did he see any­one pre­vent­ing any­one from div­ing.
He con­firmed those state­ments were true on Tues­day when asked by Pe­ter­son. 

But Ah­mad said LM­CS  divers were in­struct­ed not to dive to res­cue the four trapped divers.

“The re­sponse we got from Paria con­sis­tent­ly was that no one was to en­ter the cham­ber and no one was to dive,” Ah­mad said.