SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

LM­CS Lim­it­ed, the com­pa­ny whose four em­ploy­ees died in the Paria div­ing tragedy on Feb­ru­ary 25, has halt­ed all its op­er­a­tions.

This, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s HSE man­ag­er, Ah­mad Ali, the nephew of LM­CS own­er, Kaz­im Ali Snr, and the cousin of one of the de­ceased divers, Kaz­im Ali Jnr.

In his tes­ti­mo­ny be­fore the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) set up to in­ves­ti­gate the ac­ci­dent, Ah­mad said the com­pa­ny was fo­cus­ing on­ly on the com­mis­sion.

He was be­ing cross-ex­am­ined by Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed’s at­tor­ney Gilbert Pe­ter­son ear­li­er in the day when he first made the state­ment.

Pe­ter­son had asked Ah­mad whether the com­pa­ny had tak­en any lessons from the ac­ci­dent to up­date its safe­ty pro­to­cols.

Lat­er on in the hear­ing, LM­CS’ at­tor­ney Kami­ni Per­saud-Maraj asked Ah­mad again why the com­pa­ny had not up­dat­ed its safe­ty pro­to­cols.

“As I said be­fore, LM­CS is not cur­rent­ly ac­tive­ly seek­ing work for which the man­u­als would be the guide­lines for and, so, we are spend­ing all of our ef­fort and time on the com­mis­sion right now. So when we get more in­for­ma­tion, up­dates like this fol­low­ing an in­ci­dent es­pe­cial­ly are par­tic­u­lar­ly de­pen­dent on ac­ci­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion and the rec­om­men­da­tions made in those in­ves­ti­ga­tions and their re­ports,” Ah­mad said.

He said the com­pa­ny was wait­ing for a “prop­er idea” of what hap­pened on Feb­ru­ary 25. Ah­mad said in the case of the CoE, mul­ti­ple re­ports may be pro­duced, and LM­CS wants to use those to guide how they up­date their safe­ty man­u­als.

Per­saud-Maraj al­so ques­tioned Ah­mad on the con­tentious method state­ment, which out­lined how LM­CS would car­ry out the job.

Since the en­quiry start­ed, Paria has main­tained LM­CS did not have per­mis­sion to re­move the in­flat­able plug from the pipeline, the ac­tion which is be­lieved to have caused the dead­ly ac­ci­dent.

Per­saud-Maraj showed sev­er­al emails to Ah­mad, be­tween him, as the LM­CS rep­re­sen­ta­tive and Paria’s Ter­rence Ram­per­sads­ingh.

Asked about his in­volve­ment in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Ah­mad said, “I usu­al­ly sub­mit it (method state­ment), it is usu­al­ly sub­mit­ted to Paria, to the per­son who holds the con­tract es­sen­tial­ly, Ter­rence Ram­per­sads­ingh and then he does the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the doc­u­ments for ap­proval by Paria es­sen­tial­ly and they just let us know when every­thing has been ap­proved.”

The emails showed Ah­mad re­spond­ing to an email chain. He said that re­sponse was sent af­ter Paria asked for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on how LM­CS planned to car­ry out the job.

The email, dat­ed Jan­u­ary 4, 2022, reads, “(Q) Will the in­flat­able plug al­so be raised to the top of the new ris­er sec­tion when cut­ting and weld­ing for a new flange above wa­ter?

(A1) Yes. Both the in­flat­able plug and the sol­id bar­ri­er will be re­in­stalled at the top be­fore hot works be­gin. Step 86 has been up­dat­ed to re­flect this (now in­di­cates that Steps 15 to 28 will be re­port­ed, which in­cludes both plug and bar­ri­er in­stal­la­tion).”

In his emailed re­sponse Ram­per­sads­ingh states, “Please re­view re­spec­tive at­tach­ments, MS was re­viewed, up­dat­ed and is ac­cept­able.”

Yes­ter­day, Ah­mad said he did not re­call who from Paria had asked the ques­tion but said it was asked be­cause he had left some in­for­ma­tion out of the method state­ment sub­mit­ted to Paria ear­li­er.

“So we had that we were go­ing to in­stall the bar­ri­ers for the bot­tom cut, re­move them, but I didn’t add a line say­ing that we were go­ing to re­in­stall them when we were do­ing the sec­ond set of hot works,” Ah­mad said.

In his emailed re­sponse, Ram­per­sads­ingh states, “Please re­view re­spec­tive at­tach­ments, MS was re­viewed, up­dat­ed and is ac­cept­able.”

Per­saud-Maraj asked Ah­mad whether Ram­per­sads­ingh’s state­ment meant that Paria had ap­proved the re­moval and re­in­stal­la­tion of the plugs and he re­spond­ed, “Yes.”

Per­saud-Maraj al­so not­ed that the In­CorTech re­port in­to the tragedy, which was com­mis­sioned by the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty Au­thor­i­ty, showed there were no de­fects to the in­flat­able plug.

In his cross-ex­am­i­na­tion, Paria’s at­tor­ney Gilbert Pe­ter­son asked Ah­mad about his state­ments about vis­it­ing Berth 6 on the night of the tragedy.

Ah­mad said he ar­rived on the barge around 7 pm, and he had been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with oth­er LM­CS em­ploy­ees who were on the barge be­fore he ar­rived.

“You said in your state­ment you did not see any­body go­ing in­to the wa­ter and you did not see any­body pre­vent­ing them from go­ing in the wa­ter, that’s true?” Pe­ter­son asked.

“That is true,” Ah­mad re­spond­ed.

How­ev­er, he went on to say that while he was on the Berth 6, Paria did not al­low any of the divers to get in­to the wa­ter.

“The re­sponse we got from Paria con­sis­tent­ly was that no one was to en­ter the cham­ber and no one was to dive,” Ah­mad said.