Gail Alexan­der

Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed must say if it has restart­ed work at Berth Five and the pipeline where the re­cent tragedy with the four divers oc­curred - and po­lice and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions must lock down that "crime scene."

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made that call at Mon­day’s UNC Fo­rum.

Speak­ers kept up the pres­sure on the Gov­ern­ment and Paria on the deaths of LM­CS divers Kaz­im Ali Jr, Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuff Hen­ry and Rishi Na­gas­sar. They were among a crew of five work­ing on a Paria pipeline at Pointe-a-Pierre on Feb­ru­ary 25 when an in­ci­dent oc­curred and they were sucked in­to the pipeline. All four men died. The mat­ter is cur­rent­ly un­der probe.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the in­ci­dent will be a turn­ing point for T&T and peo­ple shouldn’t for­get Gov­ern­ment’s "un­car­ing" man­ner" in it.

She said she didn’t think Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley would give any an­swers at to­day’s "Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter” event. She de­mand­ed that he say why he met the Iran­ian leader dur­ing his re­cent Qatar trip and about al­leged as­sis­tance with Venezue­lan crude oil.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed Hull Sup­port Ser­vices was en­gaged to con­tin­ue work on the pipeline and she had in­for­ma­tion that Paria held a safe­ty meet­ing last Sun­day to “com­mence op­er­a­tions on the pipeline.” She asked if Paria had a prop­er safe­ty analy­sis for this.

She de­mand­ed that the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and DPP lock down Paria’s Berth 5 to pre­vent ev­i­dence “be­ing con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed.” She said po­lice are called in when an in­ci­dent oc­curs and every crime scene is locked down. She al­leged there was an is­sue of “in­vol­un­tary or de­lib­er­ate homi­cide.” She al­so said the Coast Guard could face civ­il suit from the divers' fam­i­lies for stop­ping res­cue ef­forts for them on Feb­ru­ary 25.

She queried the in­tel­li­gence of Paria chair­man New­man George, al­leg­ing he couldn’t “string a sen­tence to­geth­er” and next time Row­ley want­ed to call some­one "... dotish he should check his friend."

Per­sad-Biss­esar in­ten­si­fied the at­tack on the En­er­gy Cham­ber, main­tain­ing her call for the re­moval of the Cham­ber’s nom­i­nee on the five-mem­ber prob­ing team – Eu­gene Tiah. She said the Cham­ber was long ru­moured to be a Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment par­ty group and if Tiah's nom­i­na­tion was a way of help­ing in­clud­ing to sani­tise the probe re­port. She slammed the Cham­ber for not is­su­ing a state­ment when the divers died, but do­ing so in the Tiah is­sue.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who asked if all Cham­ber mem­bers sup­port­ed its po­si­tion, claimed Cham­ber mem­bers de­pend­ed on Gov­ern­ment for li­cences and liveli­hoods. Nam­ing en­er­gy com­pa­nies, she quried if they'd "en­tered the po­lit­i­cal gayelle “since they have rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the Cham­ber."

“When you en­ter the po­lit­i­cal plat­form, we'll deal with you," she de­clared, claim­ing en­er­gy sec­tor con­trac­tors had com­plained to her about the Cham­ber but said they were afraid of the Cham­ber.

UNC's Rudy In­dars­ingh called on ac­ci­dent sur­vivor Christo­pher Boodram to say if there was a 2021 ac­ci­dent on the same jet­ty where the pipeline was and if Boodram was in it.

MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly claimed Paria was silent ini­tial­ly, wasn't care­ful with de­tails it sub­se­quent­ly re­leased and there were "in­con­sis­ten­cies" with those re­leas­es and Paria's state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day.

"This (lat­est) state­ment is a tragedy on its own," he added, ques­tion­ing as­pects.

MP Bar­ry Padarath al­so called on the House Speak­er to say why a re­cent UNC mo­tion on the ac­ci­dent didn't qual­i­fy for de­bate. Not­ing the Speak­er's hus­band is Paria chair­man George, he asked if she re­cused her­self on the mo­tion. He said it was wrong if Par­lia­ment was used to "block for a New­man."