Paria widow: $1M payment brings relief, not justice

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

Near­ly four years af­ter the Paria div­ing tragedy that claimed the life of Rishi Na­gas­sar, his wid­ow says the Gov­ern­ment’s $1 mil­lion ex gra­tia pay­ment has brought some fi­nan­cial re­lief but has nei­ther eased her grief nor end­ed her pur­suit of jus­tice.

Ex­press­ing grat­i­tude to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Vanes­sa Kussie de­scribed the years since her hus­band’s death as a pe­ri­od marked by emo­tion­al pain and fi­nan­cial hard­ship.

“We had a lot of strug­gles. Ba­si­cal­ly, be­ing a sin­gle par­ent, I have had a lot of strug­gles for the past few years. Next month will make four years,” she said. “We did so many things to raise funds — from bar­be­cues to cur­ry-que and sell­ing pholourie. I did a lot of stuff.”

Kussie stressed, how­ev­er, that the pay­ment does not sig­nal the end of the fam­i­lies’ quest for ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“It is not re­al­ly that it ends here. We still have a case go­ing on,” she said.

For Kussie, jus­tice means crim­i­nal ac­count­abil­i­ty for those she be­lieves failed the divers.

“Jus­tice for me is get­ting all of those in­volved in my hus­band’s death to see be­hind bars, be­cause this did not just hit us, it hit the world,” she said. “We have a case go­ing on and I do hope some­thing comes out of it, be­cause in any oth­er coun­try they would have been be­hind bars as well.”

Re­call­ing that au­top­sy find­ings showed the divers were alive for some time — with her hus­band sur­viv­ing the longest — Kussie said the rev­e­la­tion con­tin­ues to haunt her.

“That re­al­ly hurt. It hurt so much to know that he lived for days wait­ing for help and they nev­er sent any help,” she said.

Kussie, a coun­cil­lor at the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, said she has since met with the new Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny board and re­mains hope­ful that safe­guards will be put in place to pre­vent a sim­i­lar tragedy.

“I wish it does not hap­pen to any­one else, that no oth­er fam­i­ly has to go through what we went through — and we are still go­ing through it up to this day,” she said, adding that the emo­tion­al toll con­tin­ues to af­fect their son, now six years old.

Up­set by what she de­scribed as in­ac­cu­rate and in­sen­si­tive com­ments cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, Kussie urged mem­bers of the pub­lic to de­sist. She al­so thanked her at­tor­neys, Kevin Lalchan, Naisa Brand Prod­ucts, and oth­ers who have sup­port­ed the fam­i­lies through­out the or­deal. She not­ed that on the 25th of each month, rel­a­tives con­tin­ue to hold a can­dle­light vig­il in re­mem­brance of the divers.

Na­gas­sar and his Land and Ma­rine Con­struc­tion Ser­vices (LM­CS) col­leagues — Kaz­im Ali Jr, Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry and Christo­pher Boodram — were sucked in­to a 30-inch un­der­wa­ter pipeline while per­form­ing main­te­nance work at Berth No. 6 in the Pointe-a-Pierre har­bour on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022. Boodram was the lone sur­vivor.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said the oth­er fam­i­lies af­fect­ed by the tragedy will al­so re­ceive ex gra­tia pay­ments in due course.