For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says to this day, he re­mains “deeply sad­dened” by the trag­ic deaths of four divers in the Paria div­ing in­ci­dent on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022. He al­so re­grets how the tragedy be­came “ex­treme­ly politi­cised” and pro­tract­ed.

In a post on Face­book yes­ter­day, Row­ley re­vealed his thoughts as he de­nied a news­pa­per re­port that he re­fused to re­spond to ques­tions from a Dai­ly Mail re­porter on the in­ci­dent. He al­so showed the lengthy re­sponse he pro­vid­ed—on time—to the re­porter’s queries.

In the re­sponse, Row­ley said: “I re­main deeply sad­dened by the trag­ic deaths of the four divers—Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Rishi Na­gas­sar—who per­ished in the Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, in­ci­dent at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.”

He said al­though he was out of the coun­try, he was kept abreast of what was tak­ing place.

Row­ley de­tailed how the then-gov­ern­ment had to “aban­don the idea of an in­de­pen­dent spe­cial­ist, pro­fes­sion­al, in­ves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee af­ter the then- op­po­si­tion, and oth­er voic­es, re­ject­ed and even politi­cised the ap­point­ment of the com­mit­tee as they called fran­ti­cal­ly for a com­mis­sion of en­quiry.”

He said he warned that a CoE would lead to de­lays and “cost mil­lions of dol­lars (lawyers feed­ing trough).”

“The fam­i­lies of the de­ceased divers would re­tain as their le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the CoE a gar­ru­lous mem­ber of the op­po­si­tion who was a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter,” he said.

“This mem­ber gave short shrift to the ex­is­tence of cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty (ex­cept that of Paria, the State com­pa­ny) and had no in­ter­est in the es­tab­lish­ment of find­ings of fact by the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry. It was all about a de­mand for a lump sum of mon­ey with­out any process or prop­er de­ter­mi­na­tion of li­a­bil­i­ty.”

He said af­ter the en­quiry was done, he met with the rel­a­tives of the divers and the lone sur­vivor on March 27, 2024, with the hope that Paria would set­tle with the rel­a­tives and the sur­vivor. How­ev­er, he said LM­CS re­port­ed­ly re­fused to par­tic­i­pate in dis­cus­sions for a res­o­lu­tion.

Row­ley ex­plained that as of March this year, Paria re­ceived four claims - one from the sur­viv­ing div­er Christo­pher Boodram and three on be­half of af­fect­ed fam­i­lies, but on­ly two had sup­port­ing de­tails need­ed by Paria’s in­sur­ers. No claim or de­tails have been sub­mit­ted by the fam­i­ly of one of the divers.

He added that the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment’s ef­fort to make an ex-gra­tia pay­ment to the rel­a­tives and sur­vivor re­mains in the hands of lawyers and can­not be va­cat­ed by third par­ties, in­clud­ing the new Prime Min­is­ter.

Row­ley al­so rub­bished claims his gov­ern­ment had helped Venezuela evade “in­ter­na­tion­al sanc­tions”, call­ing it a lie.