SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

The chair­man for the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Paria div­ing tragedy chas­tised Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny on Mon­day morn­ing for their late sub­mis­sion of doc­u­ments.

At the start of the hear­ing, King’s Coun­sel Jerome Lynch re­vealed that for sev­er­al months, the Com­mis­sion has been re­quest­ing the notes of the In­ci­dent Com­mand Team (ICT) set up to deal with the ac­ci­dent.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, Christo­pher Boodram, Kaz­im Ali Jnr, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Yusuf Hen­ry and Fyzal Kur­ban were sucked in­to a pipeline at Paria’s Berth 6 while do­ing main­te­nance work on the pipeline.

All but Boodram died.

The five were em­ploy­ees of LM­CS, a pri­vate com­pa­ny con­tract­ed by Paria.

LM­CS has ac­cused Paria of re­fus­ing to res­cue the men and there was a na­tion­al out­cry for jus­tice for the men, prompt­ing the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry.

On Mon­day, Lynch said the re­quest­ed doc­u­ments were on­ly pro­vid­ed by Paria to the Com­mis­sion over the week­end, and as late as 4 am on Mon­day morn­ing.

This, he said, was un­ac­cept­able.

Lynch said this late sub­mis­sion had forced him to post­pone Tues­day’s hear­ing and push some of the wit­ness­es due to give ev­i­dence in the mat­ter un­til next year.

“This is not ac­cept­able. I will not per­mit our le­gal team or in­deed any of the oth­er le­gal teams to have to present their cas­es half cocked,” the CoE chair­man as­sert­ed.

He ques­tioned Paria’s at­tor­ney, Se­nior Coun­sel Gilbert Pe­ter­son, about whether there were any oth­er doc­u­ments still out­stand­ing.

Pe­ter­son said he would have to check and ex­plained Paria was hav­ing is­sues trans­fer­ring their files to soft copies to pro­vide to the Com­mis­sion.

But this ex­cuse did not sit well with Lynch. He told Pe­ter­son Paria had had months to pre­pare their doc­u­ments.

“It may be that for some rea­son or oth­er, peo­ple thought this was go­ing to be an in­quiry, it could be con­duct­ed in a leisure­ly pace over sev­er­al years,” Lynch ob­served.

He added: “Well, that's not what was hap­pen­ing. It nev­er was what was hap­pen­ing, which is why I set a very strict timetable at the out­set. And, you know, I don't know whose fault this is, but it's some­body's fault.”