Attorneys give Paria, LMCS deadline to settle diving tragedy claims

DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

State com­pa­ny Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny and pri­vate div­ing com­pa­ny Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (LM­CS) have been giv­en un­til the end of next month to de­cide whether they wish to set­tle le­gal dis­putes with the fam­i­lies of two of the four vic­tims in a div­ing tragedy at Paria’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty in 2022.

At­tor­neys Prakash Ra­mad­har and Saira Lakhan, who are rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­lies of Fyzal Kur­ban and Yusuf Hen­ry, gave the ul­ti­ma­tum yes­ter­day as they sought to re­spond to a move by the Gov­ern­ment, led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, to make $1 mil­lion ex gra­tia pay­ments to the fam­i­lies of the four vic­tims and lone sur­vivor Christo­pher Boodram.

While Ra­mad­har thanked Per­sad-Bisses­sar for mak­ing good on the promise made by for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young be­fore the elec­tion in April last year, he sug­gest­ed that the pay­ment was in­suf­fi­cient to com­pen­sate the fam­i­lies for what they and their de­ceased loved ones en­dured and their con­tin­u­ing liv­ing ex­pens­es.

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

“One mil­lion may sound like a lot of mon­ey, but in these times it is tru­ly not,” he added.

He ex­plained that al­most the en­tire ex gra­tia pay­ment re­ceived by Kur­ban’s fam­i­ly would have to be used to clear the debt in­curred by them for his daugh­ter’s ter­tiary stud­ies in Cana­da.

“Most of the mon­ey would have to go to pay loans for her hav­ing been there al­ready, and the re­main­der till the com­ple­tion of her de­gree,” Ra­mad­har said.

“There is no cel­e­bra­tion. None,” he added.

Ra­mad­har not­ed that while Per­sad-Bisses­sar pre­sent­ed cheques to Boodram, Kur­ban’s fam­i­ly, and the fam­i­ly of Rishi Na­gas­sar on Thurs­day, Hen­ry’s daugh­ter Aliyah and her moth­er Tia Gopaul, whom he and Lakhan are rep­re­sent­ing, did not re­ceive one.

He not­ed that there is an on­go­ing is­sue over po­ten­tial claims by Hen­ry’s oth­er chil­dren with dif­fer­ent moth­ers.

Ra­mad­har not­ed that he and his team made un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts to rep­re­sent Hen­ry’s oth­er chil­dren and de­ter­mine how his com­pen­sa­tion should be di­vid­ed among them.

He sug­gest­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar was right to be adamant that such le­gal is­sues be re­solved be­fore pay­ment is made.

“I re­al­ly do hope they come for­ward,” Ra­mad­har said.

Deal­ing with the pro­posed lit­i­ga­tion against Paria and LM­CS, Ra­mad­har said he and his team made nu­mer­ous at­tempts to have the case set­tled, to spare the fam­i­lies from hav­ing to re­live their trau­ma at tri­al, 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.

He not­ed that his team and at­tor­neys from Free­dom Law Cham­bers, who are rep­re­sent­ing Na­gas­sar’s fam­i­ly and Boodram, had of­fered to set­tle the case for $5 mil­lion.

He claimed that they de­cid­ed on the fig­ure based on the se­ri­ous short­com­ings by both com­pa­nies iden­ti­fied dur­ing the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the tragedy, the needs of the vic­tims’ de­pen­dants, and the sig­nif­i­cant le­gal fees paid to lawyers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the CoE.

He said that the case would be filed a week be­fore the four-year an­niver­sary of the tragedy, which co­in­cides with the four-year statu­to­ry lim­it for bring­ing such law­suits.

“We shall write to Paria and LM­CS in the hope that they would set­tle the mat­ter in to­tal­i­ty and not leave it up to the Gov­ern­ment, even though it (Paria) is a State en­ter­prise,” Ra­mad­har said.

“This is lit­er­al­ly a drop in the buck­et of the re­sources avail­able to Paria,” he added.

Re­spond­ing to claims that the com­pa­nies’ po­si­tions were based on their poli­cies with in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, Ra­mad­har said: “We keep hear­ing mur­mur­ings about the in­sur­ance. That is none of our busi­ness. That’s a mat­ter be­tween in­sured and in­sur­er.”

He al­so not­ed that they have pend­ing claims un­der the Work­men’s Com­pen­sa­tion Act.

The leg­is­la­tion pro­vides for com­pen­sa­tion to be paid to work­ers or their fam­i­lies if they die or are left per­ma­nent­ly dis­abled dur­ing an in­ci­dent while work­ing. Claims are not de­pen­dent on the em­ploy­er be­ing found neg­li­gent in re­la­tion to the in­jury or on an em­ploy­ee be­ing found to have con­tributed to their in­jury.

In No­vem­ber last year, a High Court Mas­ter re­fused an ap­pli­ca­tion from Paria to re­move it from the claims.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, Boodram, Na­gas­sar, Hen­ry, Kur­ban, and Kaz­im Ali Ju­nior, whose fa­ther is a di­rec­tor of LM­CS, were per­form­ing main­te­nance work on an un­der­wa­ter off­shore pipeline off Berth #6 at Paria’s com­pound when they were sucked in­to the pipeline. Boodram was the lone sur­vivor.