Gail Alexan­der

The LM­CS com­pa­ny has been tak­en off all work on the pipelines at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny for the time be­ing and safe­ty ori­en­ta­tions will be re­done for all em­ploy­ee con­trac­tors among oth­er steps.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young in­di­cat­ed this in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day in re­ply to ques­tions from Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP David Lee on the div­ing tragedy that oc­curred last Fri­day.

Young was asked about steps tak­en by Paria to pre­vent a re­cur­rence of such an in­ci­dent.

Four LM­CS divers—Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Yusuff Hen­ry and Rishi Na­gas­sar—who were do­ing main­te­nance work on a Paria pipeline, died. This fol­lowed an in­ci­dent that caused them to be sucked in­to the pipeline. Their bod­ies were re­cov­ered on Mon­day and Thurs­day. A fifth div­er, Christo­pher Boodram, was res­cued.

Young ex­pressed deep sad­ness and ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly mem­bers, col­leagues and friends of the divers, whom he said, “…trag­i­cal­ly lost their life re­sult­ing from an ac­ci­dent that oc­curred when they were work­ing for their em­ploy­er LM­CS at Paria’s fa­cil­i­ties.”

On Lee’s query, Young said all ma­jor project and non-rou­tine op­er­a­tions have been sus­pend­ed and op­er­a­tions are lim­it­ed to rou­tine main­te­nance and op­er­a­tions.

As was hap­pen­ing be­fore, he added, “...Be­fore restart­ing any project or non-rou­tine work, an ex­ter­nal in­de­pen­dent re­view will be done on all risk as­sess­ments meth­ods, state­ments, haz­ard analy­sis pri­or to the au­tho­ri­sa­tion of work per­mits in­ter­nal­ly at Paria—in­clud­ing when deal­ing with sub-con­trac­tors.

“A meet­ing with all con­trac­tor em­ploy­ees will be held and safe­ty ori­en­ta­tions will be re­done for all em­ploy­ee con­trac­tors. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, LM­CS has been tak­en off of all work on the pipelines at Paria for the time be­ing.”

UNC’s Rudy In­dars­ingh asked if pipeline work by LM­CS was sus­pend­ed, why a sim­i­lar de­ci­sion wasn’t made for Paria man­age­ment of­fi­cials.

Young said it wasn’t the min­istry or any­one at En­er­gy who had tak­en any of those de­ci­sions on Paria op­er­a­tions and how the com­pa­ny was treat­ing with their sub-con­trac­tors.

“Al­so, I’m not aware of what de­ci­sions may be un­der con­sid­er­a­tion by the board, man­age­ment at Paria. What I’m aware of is that noth­ing has been sent to me with re­spect to the re­moval of any of­fi­cers. Not that needs to be sent to the min­istry,” Young said.

Asked what led to the divers’ deaths, Young said Gov­ern­ment won’t spec­u­late or as­sume what hap­pened.

“What we’ve done is ap­point a five-man pan­el which will be chaired by Mr Shiv Shar­ma and have the ap­pro­pri­ate ex­perts—two of whom have al­ready been named—with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of BP and Shell.

“It’s pru­dent to await the out­come of that in­ves­ti­ga­tion. There’s noth­ing fur­ther that can be said at this stage or will be said by Gov­ern­ment.”

Trau­ma­tol­o­gist for divers’ fam­i­lies

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ Roodal Mooni­lal has asked if it was not ap­pro­pri­ate to have im­par­tial in­de­pen­dent ex­perts, as op­posed to peo­ple con­nect­ed to mul­ti-na­tion­al oil com­pa­nies who rou­tine­ly work with Gov­ern­ment in­volved in the probe in­to the Paria div­ing tragedy.

How­ev­er, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said the team in­volves pro­fes­sion­al ex­perts, in­de­pen­dent of Gov­ern­ment and of all op­er­a­tions that may have led to the ac­ci­dent.

“There’s no con­cern with the pan­el’s com­po­si­tion and any lack of in­de­pen­dence or ex­per­tise on their parts,” Young said.

On Paria’s as­sis­tance to the divers’ fam­i­lies, Young said Paria’s ini­tial re­sponse was to en­sure the fam­i­lies re­ceived or had avail­able, ap­pro­pri­ate coun­selling ser­vices

“A trau­ma­tol­o­gist, Han­iff Ben­jamin, of the Cen­tre For Hu­man De­vel­op­ment and PEAP­SL have been en­gaged to pro­vide coun­selling ser­vices,” he said.

This of­fer was ini­tial­ly made on Feb­ru­ary 26 and con­tin­ues to be avail­able if the fam­i­lies wish to use the ser­vices. It was ini­tial­ly of­fered for one year and will be ex­tend­ed as re­quired.

“Paria con­tin­ues to com­mu­ni­cate with the fam­i­lies dai­ly to de­ter­mine how it can fur­ther sup­port them dur­ing this time,” Young said.

How­ev­er, he couldn’t say if fam­i­lies took up the of­fer. Young wished sur­viv­ing div­er Christo­pher Boodram a speedy re­cov­ery.