Families to pursue Paria litigation despite ex-gratia payments

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­lies of two of the four vic­tims in a div­ing tragedy at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty plan to go ahead with lit­i­ga­tion against the State com­pa­ny and its em­ploy­ee even as they re­ceived $1 mil­lion ex-gra­tia pay­ments from the State, this week.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence this morn­ing, at­tor­ney Prakash Ra­mad­har, who along with at­tor­ney Saira Lakhan rep­re­sents the fam­i­lies of Fyzal Kur­ban and Yusuf Hen­ry, con­firmed they would file the cas­es next month, a week be­fore the four year an­niver­sary of the tragedy.

While Ra­mad­har thanked Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for mak­ing good on the promise ini­tial­ly made last year by for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, he said this was in­suf­fi­cient to com­pen­sate the fam­i­lies for the pain and suf­fer­ing their loved ones en­dured and the on­go­ing liv­ing ex­pens­es for their chil­dren.

“Till this day I am of the view that $1 mil­lion is still too lit­tle,” Ra­mad­har said.

He said he and his team had made nu­mer­ous at­tempts to set­tle the le­gal dis­pute with Paria and their for­mer em­ploy­er, Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (LM­CS), but both com­pa­nies re­fused to ac­cept li­a­bil­i­ty and con­tin­ued to blame each oth­er for what tran­spired.

“The gov­ern­ment has done its part and now it is up to the board and di­rec­tors of Paria and LM­CS to work among them­selves and their in­sur­ance com­pa­nies and what­ev­er it is to ei­ther set­tle this mat­ter or we would have no choice but to file an ac­tion, some­thing that we are hes­i­tant to do but are pre­pared to do,” Ra­mad­har said.