Paria CoE resumes on Wednesday

THE Commission of Enquiry (CoE) into the Paria diving tragedy will resume at 10 am on Wednesday after the Christmas break. Two Paria Fuel Trading Company Ltd managers will testify.

The CoE will also sit on Thursday and Friday.

While performing repairs on February 25 at Pointe-a-Pierre, divers Fyzal Kurban, Kazim Ali Jr, Rishi Nagassar, Yusuf Henry and Christopher Boodram were sucked into an undersea pipeline by a vortex created by a surge of water pressure known as a Delta P. Boodram escaped but the other four men died.

The CoE, under British KC Jerome Lynch, is seeking to find why the men were sucked in and why no official rescue efforts were made.

Witnesses from contractor company LMCS, Paria and its associated firms including Kenson, the Coast Guard, and other parties testified from December 5-15.

So far relatives and colleagues of the deceased have said in both verbal testimony and written witness statements that a rescue attempt should have been made, even as divers known to the trapped men were volunteering to do so. However Paria retorted they first had to determine conditions inside the pipeline and their consultations with diving experts found insufficient was known to risk the lives of any rescuer sent into the pipe which was a quarter mile long and contained oil.

Paria terminal manager Mohamed Mushtaq and Paria HSE co-ordinator Paul Yearwood are due to give evidence on Wednesday. Those listed to testify on Thursday were Paria's Randolph Archibald, Rolph Seales of Kenson, Krishna Fuentes and Heritage's Osei Flemming-Holder. On Friday, testimony is due from Andy Johnson of Eastern Emergency Response Services Ltd, Anderson Gill of Gull Support Services Ltd and Antonio Donawa of Offshore Technologies Solutions Ltd.