Gail Alexan­der

A for­eign firm will act as con­sul­tant to the Mor­ri­son Com­mis­sion of En­quiry which will probe the in­ci­dent at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed where four LM­CS divers died last month.

While a com­pa­ny led by ge­ot­ech­ni­cal en­gi­neers has been en­gaged by Nid­co to ex­am­ine the cause of the Mos­qui­to Creek road­way col­lapse in Jan­u­ary and pro­pose so­lu­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley con­firmed this in Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day an­swer­ing Op­po­si­tion MPs’ ques­tions.

The CoE, head­ed by Jus­tice C Den­nis Mor­ri­son was re­cent­ly an­nounced to probe the in­ci­dent at Paria where the four divers died. This oc­curred on Feb­ru­ary 25 when they were work­ing on a pipeline at Paria’s com­pound.

Mor­ri­son is be­ing as­sist­ed by sub­sea spe­cial­ist Gre­go­ry Wil­son with Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj as lead coun­sel.

An in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pert in ac­ci­dents/in­ci­dents of that type was be­ing sought as a third com­mis­sion mem­ber.

Yes­ter­day, Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment has done all that is prop­er­ly re­quired to be done.

“We have put in place a CoE, iden­ti­fied the per­sons and we did in­di­cate at the time, that the com­mis­sion was ex­pect­ed to be a three- man com­mis­sion and we iden­ti­fied two. We did in­di­cate those two would be able to func­tion as the quo­rum as we sought the third per­son from out­side of T&T.”

“What we’ve been ad­vised in look­ing for the third per­son is what is pos­si­ble to be arranged is to have a for­eign firm that does these in­ves­ti­ga­tions to act in a con­sul­tant role to the two man com­mis­sion and that is what we pro­pose to do,” he al­so said

He added that Gov­ern­ment is fa­cil­i­tat­ing the phys­i­cal and in­fra­struc­ture arrange­ments and oth­er sup­port for the CoE and it will be up to the chair­man to de­ter­mine what calls are made for pa­pers and “ap­pear­ances and the com­mis­sion will con­duct its busi­ness as an in­de­pen­dent body.”

Row­ley said he had no in­for­ma­tion whether any fam­i­ly mem­bers or chil­dren of the divers re­ceived com­pen­sa­tion of any kind from Gov­ern­ment.

He said an­oth­er probe in­to the in­ci­dent– by Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency- isn’t a mat­ter for Cab­i­net un­til a re­port is done and none was so far pro­duced so it was not at this stage a Cab­i­net mat­ter.

Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment ex­pects OS­HA un­der the law to “con­duct its busi­ness with dis­patch.”

On an­oth­er query Row­ley said the mat­ter of a com­plaint (by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi ) to the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion against Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel Ian Mac­In­tyre isn’t be­fore Cab­i­net.

He added he knew noth­ing of any re­port the Cab­i­net has to deal with to “with­draw” the com­plaint.

Giv­ing the sta­tus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the col­lapse of the road­way at Mos­qui­to Creek, Row­ley said that Fol­low­ing the is­sue in Jan­u­ary the area is be­ing mon­i­tored dai­ly by Nid­co’s project man­ag­er and the project en­gi­neer.

The Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th al­so said Gov­ern­ment is im­ple­ment­ing rec­om­men­da­tions by the com­mit­tee ap­point­ed to in­ves­ti­gate the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic– in­clud­ing hav­ing more fre­quent and em­pa­thet­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion with COVID pa­tients and their fam­i­lies.

He claimed the lat­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion as­pect “has been ad­dressed by the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties.”

The com­mit­tee made a num­ber of rec­om­men­da­tions in its re­port, not­ing is­sues in ar­eas from pa­tients to staff arrange­ments.

Fol­low­ing the re­port, Row­ley said a Na­tion­al Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­ease co-or­di­na­tor has been en­gaged to de­vel­op a na­tion­al NCD pol­i­cy.

Da­ta man­age­ment in­clud­ing man­age­ment of elec­tron­ic health records are be­ing worked on by the Health and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Min­istries and is­sues are be­ing ad­dressed for staff com­fort and ac­com­mo­da­tion– al­ready done in some ar­eas– as well as men­tal well-be­ing of staff .

Row­ley al­so con­firmed for­mer agri­cul­ture min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat pro­vid­ed him with in­for­ma­tion to him re­gard­ing cor­rup­tion in the trans­fer of State lands by se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials.

He said as ear­ly as No­vem­ber 2015 Ramb­harat spoke to him of pos­si­ble cor­rup­tion con­nect­ed with state land de­vel­op­ment.

Row­ley gave him ad­vice which he fol­lowed and up to last week was get­ting let­ters, re­ports and in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing fraud­u­lent deal­ings with state land and oth­er as­pects of po­ten­tial crim­i­nals con­duct.

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