Sascha Wil­son

Rel­a­tives of the four un­der­wa­ter divers who have been stuck in pipe in the Gulf of Paria since Fri­day are protest­ing in front the gates of Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny.

Chant­i­ng and de­mand­ing an­swers, the fam­i­ly some of them were plac­ards are call­ing on the of­fi­cials to come out of their of­fice and speak with them.

The rel­a­tives are joined by mem­bers of the OW­TU and the MSJ.

The lost divers Kaz­im Ali Jnr, Rishi Nages­sar, 48, of Cou­va, Fyzal Kur­ban 57, of Clax­ton Bay and Yusuf Hen­ry,31, of San­gre Grande.

A fifth div­er Christo­pher Boodram who was res­cued is ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred around 3 pm just off the Pointe a Pierre jet­ty. In a re­lease on Fri­day night Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd stat­ed that the five un­der­wa­ter divers em­ployed with LM­CS Ltd were con­duct­ing an un­der­wa­ter main­te­nance ex­er­cise at No 36 Sealine Ris­er on Berth #6 at Paria Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, Pointe a Pierre.

Dur­ing the ex­er­cise, an in­ci­dent oc­curred which re­sult­ed in the loss of sight of the five men who who were be­ing mon­i­tored from shore. How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny stat­ed that in­ci­dent man­age­ment pro­to­cols at Paria were im­me­di­ate­ly trig­gered, in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished stan­dards.

The com­pa­ny stat­ed then that the cause of the in­ci­dent was still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed. How­ev­er, the fam­i­lies were told that some­thing went wrong and the men were sucked in­to a 36 inch pipe. They com­plained that that the com­pa­ny failed to con­tact them when the in­ci­dent oc­curred and to ini­ti­ate im­me­di­ate res­cue op­er­a­tions.

In a brief in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Tri­cia Ra­moutar, the sis­ter in law of Fyzal Kur­ban one of the divers, said Kur­ban's son who is part of the res­cue team told them while they were lift­ing the pipe with a crane the chain burst and the pipe went back in­to the wa­ter.

Po­lice are on the scene.

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