RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

The two com­mis­sion­ers and lead at­tor­ney to the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Paria pipeline div­ing ac­ci­dent have met with En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to dis­cuss the en­quiry.

Fol­low­ing Thurs­day’s in­tro­duc­to­ry meet­ing, the com­mis­sion’s chair­man, Jus­tice Den­nis Mor­ri­son, and sub­sea spe­cial­ist Gre­go­ry Wil­son are ex­pect­ed to re­ceive their in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment on Fri­day.

On Wednes­day, Colm Im­bert (who had been act­ing PM) said he ex­pect­ed the com­mis­sion­ers to com­mence the en­quiry as soon as pos­si­ble.

Lead coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, in an ear­li­er in­ter­view, said, “As Se­nior Coun­sel, I com­mit to do­ing what is nec­es­sary to have an ex­pe­dit­ed process and I will work with the chair­man and oth­er com­mis­sion­ers to have the process ex­pe­dit­ed.”

Over the past few weeks, rel­a­tives of the divers have com­plained about the slow pace of the en­quiry. Two of the fam­i­lies are plan­ning a protest at Wood­ford Square in Port-of-Spain at 1.30 pm on Fri­day.

Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union branch pres­i­dent Christo­pher Jack­man said the CoE is more than like­ly go­ing to be a long drawn-out process. 

“We still hope that it will iden­ti­fy the cause of the in­ci­dent and the rea­son no res­cue was at­tempt­ed,” he said.

“While this will bring some clo­sure to the fam­i­ly mem­bers, it will not help them deal with their cur­rent chal­lenges. With the bread­win­ner now gone, Vanes­sa has to fend for her­self to pro­vide for her kids and see them to school.”

He added, “The same goes for the chil­dren of Christo­pher Boodram, who is un­able to work at this time. It seems like the com­pa­ny and the State have dust­ed their hands com­plete­ly on what should be a sim­ple is­sue to re­solve.”

At­tor­ney Prakash Ra­mad­har, who is rep­re­sent­ing the in­ter­ests of rel­a­tives of divers Yusuf Hen­ry and Fyzal Kur­ban, is al­so ex­pect­ed to host a me­dia con­fer­ence at 10.30 am on Fri­day.

Boodram and fel­low divers Kur­ban, Hen­ry, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Kaz­im Ali Jr were do­ing un­der­wa­ter main­te­nance on a 30-inch di­am­e­ter pipeline at Paria’s No 36 sealine ris­er on the Berth 6 off­shore plat­form at Pointe-a-Pierre around 2.45 pm on Feb­ru­ary 25, when they were sucked in­to the pipeline.

Boodram said they had just re­moved the ex­pan­sion plug when the suc­tion oc­curred. Since the in­ci­dent, calls have been made to reg­u­larise the div­ing in­dus­try.

The Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency has been crit­i­cised for not is­su­ing im­me­di­ate pro­hi­bi­tion no­tices fol­low­ing the ac­ci­dent. The Bu­reau of Stan­dards has al­so been crit­i­cised for not com­plet­ing con­sul­ta­tion on vol­un­tary div­ing stan­dards.