Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) leader Prakash Ra­mad­har has raised con­cerns about the state of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty (OS­HA), ques­tion­ing whether the in­sti­tu­tion has been com­pro­mised and call­ing for a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence at the par­ty’s head of­fice yes­ter­day, Ra­mad­har said he has re­ceived in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ing that a se­nior OS­HA of­fi­cer has al­leged­ly been sup­press­ing the work of in­ves­ti­ga­tors. He ar­gued that such in­ter­fer­ence rais­es ques­tions about ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy with­in the au­thor­i­ty.

“If I am to be­lieve what I have read from those doc­u­ments, OS­HA is in a ter­ri­ble mess. The sys­tem has been cor­rupt­ed by per­sons, for what­ev­er rea­sons, po­lit­i­cal or oth­er­wise, who have failed in their du­ty to every work­ing man and woman in this na­tion, and to­day I am call­ing for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to OS­HA,” said Ra­mad­har.

His com­ments come af­ter a re­cent rul­ing by the Privy Coun­cil, which de­ter­mined that charges un­der OS­HA leg­is­la­tion must be filed with­in six months.

In a land­mark judg­ment last week Tues­day, five Law Lords of the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil de­ter­mined an ap­peal in which it was asked to rule on the time lim­it for the au­thor­i­ty to ini­ti­ate pros­e­cu­tions un­der the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act (OSH Act).

The Law Lords held that pros­e­cu­tions be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court and mag­is­trates must be filed with­in six months of an al­leged breach com­ing to the au­thor­i­ty’s at­ten­tion.

Its judg­ment on the is­sue was con­sis­tent with the find­ings of the lo­cal Court of Ap­peal.

Against that back­drop, Ra­mad­har ques­tioned why no charges were ever brought in re­la­tion to the 2022 Paria div­ing tragedy, which claimed the lives of four divers.

“Af­ter the tragedy in Feb­ru­ary 2022, there were many calls from dif­fer­ent sec­tors say­ing, ‘OS­HA, do your job, do your in­ves­ti­ga­tion, and lay your charges.’ To­day I am call­ing on those who had the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty then and who have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to­day-ex­plain why it is no charges were laid. If you were con­cerned that there would have been a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry or par­al­lel pro­ceed­ings, the nor­mal course of events is to lay your charges, but do not pro­ceed with them un­til oth­er de­ter­mi­na­tions.”

He al­leged that in­for­ma­tion ob­tained sug­gest­ed that a se­nior OS­HA of­fi­cial had “sup­pressed” in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

“There was a de­lib­er­ate ef­fort by a very se­nior man­ag­er with­in OS­HA to sup­press the work of one of its in­ves­ti­ga­tors who had in­tend­ed to do his in­ves­ti­ga­tion and lay charges with­in the six-month pe­ri­od to the point that that of­fi­cer had to leave OS­HA,” he claimed.

Ra­mad­har al­so claimed that un­qual­i­fied in­di­vid­u­als were be­ing hired with­in the au­thor­i­ty. He said the al­leged prac­tice has left OS­HA un­able to prop­er­ly con­duct vi­tal oil rig in­spec­tions, po­ten­tial­ly putting work­ers at fur­ther risk.

Mean­while, the COP leader con­firmed that ef­forts are still un­der­way to fi­nalise an ex gra­tia pay­ment for the fam­i­lies of the Paria divers.

On April 3, 2024, then prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced that the then-cab­i­net had de­cid­ed to make an ex gra­tia pay­ment of $1 mil­lion each to the fam­i­lies of the four de­ceased (Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Yusuf Hen­ry, and Rishi Na­gas­sar) and the lone sur­vivor, Christo­pher Boodram. This was not done be­fore the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion was vot­ed out of of­fice.

Dur­ing her first post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing on May 8, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of­fered to get me­di­a­tors in­volved to deal with the is­sue of com­pen­sa­tion. Ra­mad­har had writ­ten to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al about the is­sue.