For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, has praised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for of­fer­ing to get me­di­a­tors to deal with the is­sue of com­pen­sa­tion for fam­i­lies of the de­ceased divers and the lone sur­vivor in­volved in the Paria Fu­el div­ing tragedy.

Dur­ing Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Gov­ern­ment was look­ing in­to en­sur­ing those in­volved re­ceived the $1 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion which for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young had promised just be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“We’re look­ing at it to see how best we can do it, but there’s a bit of a com­pli­ca­tion which I’d need fur­ther ad­vice on from the lawyers for the state, which rep­re­sents tax­pay­ers,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was un­der the im­pres­sion that apart from the $1 mil­lion pay­out, the le­gal cas­es would con­tin­ue for fur­ther monies.

“So, I don’t want to run out there with­out hav­ing suf­fi­cient knowl­edge, le­gal and oth­er­wise, on how best to pro­ceed,” she said, adding Gov­ern­ment was look­ing at hav­ing the par­ties come to­geth­er be­fore a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer to see if a ju­di­cial set­tle­ment could be ar­rived at for the fam­i­lies.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Ram­lo­gan, who is rep­re­sent­ing two of the five divers, said, “The fact that it took a gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign for the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion to fi­nal­ly find its con­science and make this of­fer af­ter some three years of pain and suf­fer­ing was dis­grace­ful and shame­ful.”

Ram­lo­gan point­ed out that Young was se­vere­ly crit­i­cised by civ­il so­ci­ety and the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, as the ex-gra­tia pay­out of­fer was per­ceived as “play­ing con­ve­nient pol­i­tics” with the tragedy.

The for­mer AG said, “The gov­ern­ment glee­ful­ly spent $50 mil­lion in le­gal fees on a Com­mis­sion of In­quiry that fat­tened the pock­ets of its le­gal friends but did not pay one red cent to the griev­ing fam­i­lies.

“As ex­pect­ed, Stu­art Young’s promise nev­er ma­te­ri­alised. The elec­tion has come and gone and as prime min­is­ter, he re­fused to pay the $1 mil­lion to each fam­i­ly as promised.”

Com­mend­ing Per­sad Bisses­sar for see­ing it fit to fol­low through and de­liv­er on Young’s promise, Ram­lo­gan said, “We al­so wel­come her sen­si­ble pro­pos­als that the le­gal claims be am­i­ca­bly re­solved via a ju­di­cial set­tle­ment con­fer­ence.”

He ex­plained that this was a par­al­lel process to ad­ver­sar­i­al lit­i­ga­tion, where­by a judge acts as a me­di­a­tor and sits with the par­ties to fa­cil­i­tate a ne­go­ti­at­ed res­o­lu­tion that can lead to a set­tle­ment of the le­gal case.

Ram­lo­gan added, “We wel­come this ex­cel­lent ini­tia­tive be­cause it will save pre­cious ju­di­cial time and le­gal costs which the fam­i­lies can ill af­ford.

“The for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion seemed con­tent to drag these poor peo­ple through ex­pen­sive, un­nec­es­sary, hos­tile lit­i­ga­tion that could have last­ed over 10 years.”

He said this would have been “yet an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for Paria’s lawyers to smile all the way to the bank whilst these vic­tims of cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter and crim­i­nal neg­li­gence con­tin­ued to suf­fer in si­lence.”

Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Yusuf Hen­ry all lost their lives on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, af­ter be­ing sucked in­to a 36-inch pipeline from a hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber they had been work­ing on at a Paria Fu­el fa­cil­i­ty off Pointe-a-Pierre. Christo­pher Boodram was the lone sur­vivor.

A Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the in­ci­dent, led by Jerome Lynch, KC, found the in­ci­dent was the re­sult of gross neg­li­gence and made over 50 rec­om­men­da­tions, in­clud­ing charg­ing Paria with cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter.