Paria Fuel tragedy survivor still wants justice after collecting $1M ex-gratia payout

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

Al­though the Gov­ern­ment has award­ed him a $1 mil­lion ex-gra­tia pay­ment, Christo­pher Boodram, the lone sur­vivor of the 2022 Paria Fu­el div­ing tragedy, says his bat­tle for jus­tice is far from over.

Near­ly four years af­ter the trag­ic in­ci­dent claimed the lives of his four col­leagues, Boodram said yes­ter­day he was still wait­ing for those re­spon­si­ble for fail­ing to res­cue them to be held ac­count­able.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at his home, Boodram said, “Is four years, and no­body lost their job. No­body was jailed. And I think this cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter charge in Trinidad and To­ba­go is re­al­ly non­sen­si­cal be­cause this is just a fine. And, for com­pa­nies like Paria, a cou­ple hun­dred thou­sand or a mil­lion is noth­ing.”

Lament­ing that the last four years have been emo­tion­al­ly, phys­i­cal­ly, spir­i­tu­al­ly, and fi­nan­cial­ly chal­leng­ing, he not­ed that his le­gal bat­tle with Paria is still on­go­ing.

Thank­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment for the ex-gra­tia pay­ment and de­scrib­ing it as a ges­ture of good faith, Boodram said,”I still have my le­gal mat­ter be­fore the court, and I would like to urge Paria to come for­ward with a set­tle­ment. It’s been four long years, and every­body wants to close this chap­ter of their life.”

Boodram’s col­leagues, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Kaz­im Ali Ju­nior, Fyzal Kur­ban, and Yusuf Hen­ry, all Land and Ma­rine Con­struc­tion Ser­vices (LM­CS) work­ers, lost their lives when they were sucked in­to a 30-inch un­der­wa­ter pipeline while per­form­ing main­te­nance at Berth No 6 in the Pointe-à-Pierre Har­bour on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022.

Though Boodram sur­vived, he said he has been plagued with night­mares and un­able to re­turn to work.

“From it (night­mares) be­ing every night, now it’s not every night, but it’s still there. Some­times I still jolt out of sleep, breath­ing hard, just re­liv­ing the whole ex­pe­ri­ence again,” he said.

Look­ing ahead, Boodram is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Jerome Lynch-led Com­mis­sion of In­quiry in­to the Paria tragedy and en­sure prop­er over­sight and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“I think we need a ma­rine emer­gency re­sponse—peo­ple who are equipped for a dive res­cue, for a boat flip­ping over, a barge sink­ing—be­cause we are an in­dus­tri­al na­tion and we have so much of plat­forms out there,” he said.

On Thurs­day, Boodram and the fam­i­lies of Rishi Na­gas­sar and Fyzal Kur­ban re­ceived cheques for ex-gra­tia pay­ments of $1m each from the Gov­ern­ment.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said pay­ments for the re­main­ing fam­i­lies will be made in due course.

Charges un­der the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act were laid against Paria Fu­el, two of its of­fi­cials, LM­CS, and its di­rec­tor Kaz­im Ali Snr. The Privy Coun­cil, how­ev­er, has ruled that they were laid out­side the lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od.

Mean­while, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day said he was hap­py that the ex-gra­tia pay­ments, which were a com­mit­ment un­der his Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment, were fi­nal­ly award­ed.

He re­called ex­plain­ing to the pub­lic then the dif­fi­cul­ties and frus­tra­tions the gov­ern­ment faced in try­ing to go through le­gal means to en­sure the fam­i­lies re­ceived some fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance while their court mat­ters were still pro­ceed­ing.

“I think the pop­u­la­tion will see and they can make their own judge­ments as to the type of pol­i­tics that were played out. But I am hap­py that those two fam­i­lies got the mon­ey that Cab­i­net de­cid­ed in April 2025 they should get, as an ex-gra­tia pay­ment,” said Young.