Renu­ka Singh

On the eve of the ar­rival in T&T of Sir Den­nis Mor­ri­son who will chair the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Paria div­ing tragedy, the lone sur­vivor of that mishap has made an im­pas­sioned ap­peal for the ex­er­cise to the scrapped and the mon­ey giv­en to the fam­i­lies of the lost divers in­stead.

Boodram said the Gov­ern­ment, as well as of­fi­cials of Paria and the dive com­pa­ny, LM­CS had ne­glect­ed him.

“Some­times, I wish I had died in that pipe too,” he said.

Boodram told the Sun­day Guardian he is dread­ing the up­com­ing CoE for two rea­sons—he knows that he will have to re­count the tragedy that claimed the lives of his four “broth­ers” but he is al­so fac­ing a mas­sive fi­nan­cial strain as he is un­able to work be­cause of his in­juries.

The CoE is the State’s re­sponse to the po­lit­i­cal crit­i­cism about the se­lec­tion of ex­perts to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent but for Boodram, it’s a waste of mon­ey.

“So much mon­ey for this pap­pyshow when I have no mon­ey to even buy books for my chil­dren for school, when I still wake up 2, 3, 4 o’clock in the morn­ing hear­ing the voic­es of the men, call­ing me to help them?” an emo­tion­al Boodram asked.

Boodram is cur­rent­ly be­ing rep­re­sent­ed pro bono by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan SC but does not ex­pect that free rep­re­sen­ta­tion to last for the six months it might take for the CoE to be con­duct­ed.

He said al­though 46 days have passed since the tragedy that claimed the lives of his friends and fel­low divers—Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Yusuf Hen­ry—he still hears them call­ing for him.

He con­sid­ers the CoE to be an ex­er­cise with ex­pen­sive ex­perts and se­nior rank­ing of­fi­cials that mean noth­ing to him be­cause at this point he can­not af­ford the le­gal weight need­ed to par­tic­i­pate or re­fute any al­le­ga­tions made dur­ing the process.

“I am a wit­ness, I am a sur­vivor but they’re bring­ing in an ex­pert div­er to say what could have hap­pened or may have hap­pened. I know what hap­pened, I al­ready know,” Boodram said. “But be­cause I don’t have that ex­pert ti­tle and can­not af­ford to bring in my own ex­pert, they not go­ing to take me on,” he said.

On Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 25, Boodram was the res­cue div­er when his four friends and col­leagues from the LM­CS Ltd en­tered the pipeline on Berth Six to re­place leak­ing fix­tures. It was a rou­tine op­er­a­tion and the men were in the test­ing phase when the tragedy oc­curred.

They were sucked in­to the pipe, down the tube and in­to the cham­ber run­ning par­al­lel to the sea bed. Boodram found an air pock­et and dragged him­self back out to the ver­ti­cal tub­ing. He said his friends were right be­hind and one who he calls “Fyz” was beg­ging him to stay.

“I tell Fyz, doh wor­ry Fyz, I com­ing back for you. He asked me again if I com­ing back and I say, ‘Yeah boy, I com­ing back’,” Boodram re­called.

As he re­liv­ed that mo­ment, Boodram be­came emo­tion­al and took a few mo­ments to col­lect him­self.

“I’m sor­ry, the doc­tors said this would keep hap­pen­ing. I just for­get lit­tle things now,” he said.

Psy­chol­o­gists have told him he can­not work in the wa­ter again be­cause the trau­ma is too in­tense.

But for Boodram, no work means no mon­ey and the fi­nan­cial bur­den of rais­ing three young chil­dren rests square­ly on the shoul­ders of his wife.

“She’s a nurse, she fac­ing COVID every day, work­ing shifts, then com­ing home to help me when I wake up from a night­mare, then deal­ing with the chil­dren. It’s too much,” he said.

Boodram said af­ter all his trau­ma, in­juries and emo­tion­al scars, he is feel­ing for­got­ten and ne­glect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment, Paria, the State-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny and LM­CS.

“I feel like it would have been bet­ter to die with them than to live like this,” he said.

He has been get­ting by sup­port­ed by his wife and good Samar­i­tans at his church. He al­so re­ceived some fi­nan­cial help from MP Rudy In­dars­ingh who raised mon­ey for him and his fam­i­ly.

“This was a na­tion­al tragedy. Four men lost their lives and noth­ing? The com­pa­ny ex­ec­u­tives car­ry on like nor­mal, they don’t lose their jobs, not even a sus­pen­sion, just mak­ing their salary and car­ry­ing on. The big wigs who com­ing in for this CoE get­ting paid and I lost my friends, my un­cle and men­tor, lost my liveli­hood and I can­not even af­ford to fight in this CoE. What­ev­er they say just goes,” he said.

Boodram con­firmed that he was of­fered help and coun­selling as­sis­tance by Paria but said he was hes­i­tant to ac­cept it af­ter a video of the pipeline was leaked to a so­cial me­dia per­son­al­i­ty.

He asked: “Who leaked that? And now why would I . . . how could I trust them not to leak my coun­selling ses­sions too? I can­not trust them.”

He feels the same about med­ical help and le­gal as­sis­tance.

“It has to be some­one I trust and not some­one they hire for me be­cause I can­not trust that they don’t have an agen­da,” he said.

“Look the same man who called for the ex­ec­u­tive to be re­moved, they now hire him and put him in charge, you hear noth­ing again about re­mov­ing any­body,” Boodram said, re­fer­ring to CoE lead coun­sel, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj.

In ear­ly March, Ma­haraj re­port­ed­ly called for the ex­ec­u­tive to step aside un­til the mat­ter was in­ves­ti­gat­ed and even said an in­ter­im ex­ec­u­tive should be put in place. Two days lat­er, on March 10, Gov­ern­ment an­nounced that Ma­haraj was se­lect­ed to head up the CoE.

On Wednes­day Guardian Me­dia asked both the Prime Min­is­ter and Young whether the Cab­i­net had fi­nalised the CoE bud­get and whether it in­clud­ed le­gal costs in­curred by the vic­tims. Nei­ther man an­swered.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, three pow­er­ful lo­cal law firms were jostling to rep­re­sent Paria. The le­gal cost for rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the CoE ranges from $5 mil­lion to $7 mil­lion. LMC has re­tained its own bat­tery of lawyers for the CoE.