Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Over four years af­ter the trag­ic in­ci­dent at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty, where four divers lost their lives, the fate of par­al­lel pros­e­cu­tions brought by the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty (OSH Au­thor­i­ty) is still up in the air.

The case ini­ti­at­ed by the OSH Au­thor­i­ty was left in lim­bo af­ter the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil de­liv­ered a land­mark judg­ment in Sep­tem­ber last year, in which it up­held a six-month time lim­it for bring­ing such charges af­ter statu­to­ry breach­es come to the at­ten­tion of its in­spec­tors.

The out­come of the case may lead to the dis­missal of the charges de­pend­ing on whether the time lim­it is de­ter­mined to be­gin when the in­ci­dent oc­curred in Feb­ru­ary 2022 or when the Com­mis­sion of In­quiry (CoI), ap­point­ed to look in­to the in­ci­dent, de­liv­ered its fi­nal re­port rec­om­mend­ing the charges in Jan­u­ary 2024.

The case, which was ini­ti­at­ed months af­ter the CoI re­port, was ini­tial­ly as­signed to for­mer Deputy Chief Mag­is­trate Bri­an Dabideen but had to be trans­ferred late last year af­ter Dabideen was ap­point­ed to act as Chief Mag­is­trate.

When the case came up for hear­ing for the first time be­fore Se­nior Mag­is­trate Marisa Gomez yes­ter­day, at­tor­neys for the par­ties sought to up­date her on pre­vi­ous de­vel­op­ments and the pre­lim­i­nary is­sue, which is yet to be de­ter­mined.

The Au­thor­i­ty’s lawyer Richard Ma­son stat­ed that the com­plaint in the case, for­mer Chief In­spec­tor Franz Bris­bane, would have to be re­placed as his con­tract came to an end with the case still pend­ing.

At­tor­neys Bran­don Sookoo and Naveen Maraj in­di­cat­ed that they were re­cent­ly ap­point­ed to rep­re­sent Paria.

They stat­ed that while Paria’s for­mer lawyer Sophia Chote pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed that the charges could con­tin­ue, they took the op­po­site po­si­tion af­ter re­view­ing the case and con­sult­ing with the com­pa­ny.

Se­nior Coun­sel Gilbert Pe­ter­son, who is rep­re­sent­ing Paria’s for­mer gen­er­al man­ag­er Mush­taq Mo­hammed and its ter­mi­nal op­er­a­tions man­ag­er Col­in Piper, stat­ed that sub­mis­sions had al­ready been filed sup­port­ing the move for the charges to be dis­missed.

At­tor­ney Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan, who is rep­re­sent­ing the div­er’s em­ploy­er, Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices Ltd (LM­CS), and the com­pa­ny’s di­rec­tor Kaz­im Ali Snr, said that she need­ed some ad­di­tion­al time to file her sub­mis­sions in sup­port of the po­si­tion tak­en by the oth­er de­fen­dants.

Mag­is­trate Gomez set dead­lines for the fil­ing of the sub­mis­sions and ad­journed the case to De­cem­ber 11, when she is ex­pect­ed to ei­ther rule or re­quest fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the par­ties.

“Hope­ful­ly by then I have read all the sub­mis­sions and come to a po­si­tion as well,” she said.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, LM­CS divers Christo­pher Boodram, Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Yusuf Hen­ry, and Ali’s son Kaz­im Jr, were sucked in­to the 30-inch-di­am­e­ter pipeline they were per­form­ing main­te­nance work at Paria’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty.

All were se­ri­ous­ly in­jured, but Boodram man­aged to make his way to the en­trance of the pipeline and was res­cued.

Cab­i­net ini­tial­ly ap­point­ed a five-mem­ber team to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent but even­tu­al­ly ap­point­ed a CoI due to pub­lic crit­i­cism.

In its re­port, the CoI pre­sent­ed sev­er­al dozen rec­om­men­da­tions, in­clud­ing charges un­der the OSH Act.

The charges were even­tu­al­ly laid be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court and a mag­is­trate, and the de­fen­dants plead­ed not guilty be­fore the lat­ter.