sto­ries by
SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

The chair­man of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Paria div­ing tragedy has post­poned to­day’s sit­ting and chas­tised Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny for the late sub­mis­sion of doc­u­ments yes­ter­day.

King’s Coun­sel Jerome Lynch said hun­dreds of pages of doc­u­ments were sub­mit­ted by Paria over the week­end and as late as 4 am yes­ter­day to the Com­mis­sion.

He said for months the Com­mis­sion had been ask­ing Paria to pro­vide doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing notes from the In­ci­dent Com­mand Team (ICT) set up in the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math of the Feb­ru­ary 25 ac­ci­dent which led to the deaths of four LM­CS divers.

On that day, five divers from LM­CS, Christo­pher Boodram, Kaz­im Ali Ju­nior, Yusuf Hen­ry, Fyzal Kur­ban and Rishi Na­gas­sar, were work­ing on a 30-inch pipeline when they were sucked in­to the pipe. All but Boodram died.

LM­CS has ac­cused Paria of re­fus­ing to res­cue the men and a na­tion­al out­cry for jus­tice for the four divers prompt­ed the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry.

Lynch, who said Paria’s late sub­mis­sion of doc­u­ments was un­ac­cept­able, out­lined the time­line of the Com­mis­sion’s re­quests. He de­scribed what was sent by the state-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny as a “doc­u­ment dump.”

“It is in­con­ceiv­able that those who are re­spon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing ma­te­r­i­al to this en­quiry could not have ap­pre­ci­at­ed that this ma­te­r­i­al was like­ly to be rel­e­vant. We get it this week­end, notwith­stand­ing the fact that we have asked for it on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions,” Lynch said.

He said the var­i­ous le­gal teams in­volved in the en­quiry did not have enough time to go through the doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed to prop­er­ly cross-ex­am­ine or ques­tion Paria’s prin­ci­pal wit­ness­es, in­clud­ing gen­er­al man­ag­er Mush­taq Mo­hammed.

Lynch said with Tues­day’s sit­ting post­poned, three Paria rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Mo­hammed, Collin Piper (ter­mi­nal op­er­a­tions man­ag­er) and Cather­ine Balkissoon (tech­ni­cal lead), will give their ev­i­dence on Wednes­day and Tues­day.

He said Paria’s Paul Year­wood (HSE co-or­di­na­tor), Ran­dolph Arch­bald (HSEQ lead) and Her­itage’s Os­ei Flem­ming-Hold­er (op­er­a­tions HSSE man­ag­er), will now have to tes­ti­fy in Jan­u­ary.

“Those are the last three wit­ness­es that we will hear be­fore Christ­mas. We will get through them, if it means sit­ting too late, I don’t care. We will sit un­til they have been heard this side of Christ­mas. The oth­er wit­ness­es Arch­bald, Year­wood and Flem­ming-Hold­er will have to be heard next year,” Lynch said.

He asked Paria’s at­tor­ney, se­nior coun­sel, Gilbert Pe­ter­son, whether Paria had any more doc­u­ments to sub­mit. Pe­ter­son said he was un­sure and would have to check.

He ex­plained that Paria was hav­ing is­sues trans­fer­ring their files to soft copies to pro­vide to the Com­mis­sion.

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

“It may be that for some rea­son or oth­er peo­ple thought this was go­ing to be an en­quiry, it could be con­duct­ed at a leisure­ly pace over sev­er­al years. Well, that’s not what was hap­pen­ing. It’s 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,” he said.

“I don’t re­al­ly care at this stage what I want to do is to make sure that we have all of the ma­te­r­i­al that is nec­es­sary for us to con­duct this en­quiry, with­out any­body be­ing able to say lat­er on, well, you didn’t have this or didn’t have that.”