President distances her office from Paria enquiry mess

THE Office of the President (OTP) is distancing itself from complaints about under-resourcing for the commission of enquiry (CoE) into the Paria tragedy by its chairman, Queens Counsel Jerome Lynch.

After Lynch’s statements at the procedural hearing on Wednesday about the lack of resources for the commission to do its work, Attorney General Reginald Armour also distanced himself from the arrangements and pointed the media to the Office of the President.

Lead counsel to the commission, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, has also denied any responsibility.

The OTP issued a statement, which was also posted on its Facebook page.

“The Office of the President issues the following statement in response to enquiries from the media and to avoid any possible public misunderstanding of the Office of the President's role vis-a-vis commissions of enquiry.

“The Office of the President has no role/responsibility for the financing or other resourcing of any aspect of commissions of enquiry.

The President appoints commissioners on the advice of and on terms provided by Cabinet and at the conclusion of the enquiry, receives the relevant report for onward transmission.

"This is the OTP's sole involvement with commissions of enquiry,” the full statement read.

At Wednesday’s procedural hearing at Tower D, International Waterfront Centre, Port of Spain, Lynch said he was appointed by President Paula-Mae Weekes to head the commission, after Justice Dennis Morrison withdrew for personal reasons.

Lynch was subsequently appointed, along with subsea specialist Gregory Wilson, Maharaj, Ronnie Bissessar and Vijaya Maharaj, to look at the evidence to find out what went wrong on February 25 when four divers lost their lives and to make recommendations to prevent a similar mishap.

Christopher Boodram, Fyzal Kurban, Rishi Nagassar, Kazim Ali Jr and Yusuf Henry – who worked for contractor LMCS Ltd – were sucked into a 30-inch-diameter pipeline on which they were doing maintenance work for Paria Fuel Trading Co Ltd at Pointe-a-Pierre.

Pressure from the public and families of the survivor and the deceased men led the Government to establish a five-member team, headed by TT Energy Chamber chair Eugene Tiah, to investigate the incident.

Criticism ofTiah led to the scrapping of this team and the appointment of the CoE, which was further delayed when Morrision resigned.