Beckles calls for thorough probe into fatal Chaguaramas boating collision

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has called for a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Sun­day’s fa­tal boat­ing col­li­sion off Ch­aguara­mas, de­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as a tragedy of a mag­ni­tude no fam­i­ly should have to en­dure.

Speak­ing to re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Beck­les said the loss of life had been par­tic­u­lar­ly painful for the af­fect­ed fam­i­lies, re­call­ing that she vis­it­ed the home of one of the miss­ing men, along­side Diego Mar­tin West MP Hans Des Vi­gnes, ear­li­er in the day.

She said rel­a­tives re­ceived a tele­phone call in­form­ing them that a body had been re­cov­ered while she was at the home. Beck­les and Des Vi­gnes ac­com­pa­nied them to the Care­nage Po­lice Sta­tion.

“It was painful to see them go to that body, you know. And, you know, the po­lice ba­si­cal­ly say­ing, well, you know... you can’t see the, you know, there’s no face be­cause, you know... so it’s painful,” she said.

Beck­les said the ex­pe­ri­ence un­der­scored the need for stronger mea­sures to pre­vent sim­i­lar in­ci­dents.

“The most im­por­tant thing for me is, I mean, hav­ing my­self wit­nessed the pain and the dis­tress of the fa­ther and the moth­er and a cou­ple oth­ers, it’s re­al­ly painful, you know, that your child or your broth­er or your hus­band leaves to go on a lime and some­thing like that could hap­pen. I want to, you know, ad­vo­cate for a very thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion and, of course, on be­half of the PNM, to ex­press con­do­lences.”

She al­so called for ap­pro­pri­ate leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing the op­er­a­tion of ma­rine ves­sels, in­clud­ing mea­sures to en­sure pas­sen­ger safe­ty.

Beck­les, mean­while, dis­missed con­cerns about Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi rep­re­sent­ing one of the fam­i­lies con­nect­ed to the speed­boat that was in­volved in the crash.

“Sen­a­tor Al-Rawi is an at­tor­ney. He has his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as an at­tor­ney. Our main con­cern is a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­cause this is a se­ri­ous mat­ter. In a small coun­try like ours, you know, just over a mil­lion peo­ple and you have six per­sons dy­ing in a boat­ing ac­ci­dent. That is a tragedy of the pro­por­tion that none of us would want.”

Mean­while, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John said the Gov­ern­ment was open to fur­ther mea­sures to strength­en ma­rine safe­ty, in­clud­ing ad­di­tion­al reg­u­la­tions where nec­es­sary. How­ev­er, she stressed that leg­is­la­tion alone would not pre­vent tragedies.

“There’s al­so some­thing called per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, eh. You can have all the laws, all the reg­u­la­tions; we have to take our­selves se­ri­ous­ly and our role se­ri­ous­ly as part­ners,” John said.

Nev­er­the­less, she is pleased with the re­sponse from state agen­cies.

“As it is right now, I am sat­is­fied with the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs in terms of their cov­er­age, par­tic­u­lar­ly of the par­ty boats, where, you know, that could be an is­sue in wait­ing, but they have 100% (check on par­ty boats). We have a lot of ad­vi­sories go­ing out and so on,” John said.

She al­so point­ed to ad­di­tion­al equip­ment sought by De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge dur­ing Thurs­day’s Cab­i­net meet­ing to sup­port search-and-res­cue and re­cov­ery op­er­a­tions.

How­ev­er, when asked to make that dis­clo­sure in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Sturge de­clined to re­veal which as­sets were de­ployed dur­ing Sun­day’s col­li­sion, say­ing it would be un­wise to re­veal those de­tails amid the on­go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He al­so pro­vid­ed no de­tails on ad­di­tion­al pa­trol as­sets or en­force­ment mech­a­nisms be­ing de­ployed in Ch­aguara­mas and oth­er coastal wa­ters to pre­vent sim­i­lar in­ci­dents.

Sturge, how­ev­er, pledged that the Gov­ern­ment would make a com­pre­hen­sive state­ment on the mat­ter at the ap­pro­pri­ate time.