The Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the cir­cum­stances which led to the trag­ic ac­ci­dent at fa­cil­i­ties owned by Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed has re­quest­ed state­ments about the in­ci­dent from mem­bers of the pub­lic.

In a full-page ad­ver­tise­ment in the news­pa­pers yes­ter­day, the Com­mis­sion, which is now chaired by Jerome Lynch, QC, has in­vit­ed writ­ten state­ments and any sup­port­ing doc­u­ments rel­e­vant to the Com­mis­sion’s Terms of Ref­er­ences.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, four divers—Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Yusuf Hen­ry—were sucked in by a 30-inch pipeline at Paria’s Berth #6.

A fifth div­er, Christo­pher Boodram, was res­cued the same day the in­ci­dent oc­curred.

The bod­ies of the oth­er four divers were even­tu­al­ly re­moved from the pipeline on Feb­ru­ary 28.

The divers all worked for LCMS Ltd, which was con­tract­ed to do the works by Paria.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­quests for state­ments is­sued by the Com­mis­sion, mem­bers of the pub­lic must sub­mit writ­ten state­ments with “copies of any rel­e­vant doc­u­ments” to­geth­er with their names and oth­er per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion.

It added, that the Com­mis­sion will ex­am­ine the in­for­ma­tion sub­mit­ted and will make a de­ter­mi­na­tion as to whether or not the per­son sub­mit­ting the in­for­ma­tion will be re­quired to give ev­i­dence be­fore the Com­mis­sion.

The clos­ing date for state­ments to be sub­mit­ted is Fri­day, Au­gust 12 at 4 pm.

The first hear­ing of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry is sched­uled for Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 7.

In the full-page ad, the Com­mis­sion not­ed that it is pre­pared to sit some evenings to en­sure the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the fam­i­lies of the divers and mem­bers of the pub­lic.