RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­i­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Com­mer­cial divers are call­ing on the Bu­reau of Stan­dards to re­sume con­sul­ta­tions for the de­vel­op­ment of a Div­ing Code to reg­u­late com­pa­nies that are vi­o­lat­ing safe­ty stan­dards as they un­der­take lu­cra­tive div­ing projects with­in the en­er­gy in­dus­try.

Since the deaths of the divers - Rishi Na­gas­sar, Yusuf Hen­ry, Kaz­im Ali Jr and Fyzal Kur­ban, sev­er­al ac­ci­dents have been un­earthed.

One of these was raised by the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union’s branch pres­i­dent Christo­pher Jack­man who said a work­er lost his leg fol­low­ing an ac­ci­dent at an LM­CS fab­ri­ca­tion yard in Ju­ly 2021.

An ex­plo­sion at Berth No. 3 was al­so dis­closed by the lone sur­vivor in the pipeline tragedy, Christo­pher Boodram who claimed even though work­ers’ lives had been at risk, no in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been done as to the cause of the De­cem­ber ex­plo­sion.

In an in­ter­view, Bu­reau of Stan­dard’s Head of Stan­dard­iza­tion Na­di­ta Ra­macha­la re­vealed that con­sul­ta­tions for the es­tab­lish­ment of the div­ing code are on­go­ing.

How­ev­er, it has been more than four years since a meet­ing was held with the Spec­i­fi­ca­tion Com­mit­tee.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a copy of the Draft Code which aims to reg­u­lar­ize the op­er­a­tions of “all lo­cal, for­eign and self-em­ployed div­ing con­trac­tors when op­er­at­ing in the ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters of T&T.”

The Code had been draft­ed us­ing the guide­lines of the In­ter­na­tion­al Ma­rine Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (IM­CA) 2007), the In­ter­na­tion­al Code of Prac­tice for Off­shore Div­ing and Cana­di­an Stan­dards As­so­ci­a­tion, (CSA) and the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty Code for Div­ing Op­er­a­tions On­tario, CSA. Un­der Sec­tion 4 of the Code, there are spec­i­fi­ca­tions about the div­ing con­trac­tor’s du­ties, roles and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. 

It states: “For any div­ing project, there shall be a div­ing con­trac­tor. The div­ing con­trac­tor shall be re­spon­si­ble for em­ploy­ing the divers. If there is more than one com­pa­ny em­ploy­ing divers, then there shall be a writ­ten agree­ment iden­ti­fy­ing which com­pa­ny is in over­all con­trol.”

The code fur­ther stip­u­lates that the div­ing con­trac­tor should de­fine a man­age­ment struc­ture in writ­ing with “a clear han­dover of su­per­vi­so­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ties at ap­pro­pri­ate stages of the en­tire div­ing op­er­a­tion.”

It notes: “The div­ing con­trac­tor shall pro­vide a safe sys­tem of work to car­ry out the div­ing ac­tiv­i­ty through the use of an over­all qual­i­ty man­age­ment sys­tem which in­cludes a safe­ty man­age­ment sys­tem in­clud­ing a div­ing project plan, emer­gency and con­tin­gency plans based on a risk as­sess­ment; ap­pro­pri­ate in­sur­ance poli­cies; risk as­sess­ments for mo­bi­liza­tion and de­mo­bil­i­sa­tion, the op­er­a­tion of the equip­ment and work tasks to be un­der­tak­en; man­age­ment of change pro­ce­dure and a safe and suit­able place from which op­er­a­tions are to be car­ried out.”

There are al­so stip­u­la­tions for the mon­i­tor­ing of equip­ment.

T&T’s com­mer­cial div­ing in­struc­tion Dr Glenn Ched­die who spoke with Guardian Me­dia said the equip­ment used by the four LM­CS divers who died in­side No.36 sealine on Feb­ru­ary 25, was not ap­pro­pri­ate for a com­mer­cial div­ing project.

He said the men were sup­posed to be wear­ing a div­ing hel­met with a sur­face air sup­ply. This view is cor­rob­o­rat­ed by for­mer Petrotrin su­per­in­ten­dent Vish­nu Ram­jat­tan who worked for 30 years in Area West where the divers died.

The Code, if it had been en­forced, would have guid­ed con­trac­tors, Dr Ched­die said as there were spe­cif­ic guide­lines for div­ing equip­ment and div­er cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The Code notes, “The div­ing con­trac­tor should sup­ply suit­able equip­ment that is au­dit­ed and cer­ti­fied in ac­cor­dance with the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments, which in­clude but are not lim­it­ed to div­ing guid­ance notes, In­ter­na­tion­al Ma­rine Or­ga­ni­za­tion Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion doc­u­ments and guid­ance notes for Re­mote Sys­tems and Re­mote­ly Op­er­at­ed Ve­hi­cles.”

All equip­ment has to be “cor­rect­ly and prop­er­ly main­tained; the div­ing team should com­prise of suf­fi­cient per­son­nel of the re­quired grades and per­son­nel should hold valid med­ical and train­ing cer­tifi­cates in ac­cor­dance with the ex­ist­ing div­ing stan­dards (TTS/CSA Z 275.5:2010).”

Ra­macha­la, in an email, said the TTBS was com­mit­ted to the es­tab­lish­ment of the div­ing code.

How­ev­er, Dr Ched­die be­lieves that if TTBS had not shut down the work of the Spec­i­fi­ca­tion Com­mit­tee and stalled with the de­vel­op­ment of the div­ing codes, so many com­pa­nies would not vi­o­late safe­ty stan­dards.

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS