Grounds for corporate manslaughter charge

On Friday afternoon, Energy Minister Stuart Young told the House of Representatives that the report of the Commission of Enquiry (CoE) into the Paria diving tragedy has been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions for consideration.

Mr Young then laid the report in the House, making it one of the few completed reports by a CoE to become an officially public document.

The report offers a detailed timeline of what happened and more compellingly, what didn't happen, beginning in the hours before the five divers started work on the afternoon of February 25, 2022.

The commissioners found that Paria failed in its duty of care on multiple fronts, by failing to communicate technical changes to the workspace before it began, assigning unqualified personnel to supervise the works on its behalf and failed to act with either authority or decisiveness during the critical hours when it might have been possible to attempt a rescue.

That demonstrated incompetence extended to Paria's Incident Response Team, which retreated from the problem during the crucial hours immediately after the incident while shutting down any consideration of a rescue.

One hundred-and-fifty long minutes after the divers were sucked in; Christopher Boodram was pulled from the pipeline. He had largely saved himself, dragging his way back through the hydrocarbon slurry in the pipeline until he grasped a chain, banging on the pipe until he was pulled out.

Mr Boodram's verbatim testimony – reproduced between pages 172 and 175 of the report – is a harrowing record of the diver's experience and a unique first person account of the situation in the pipeline. No information was taken from Boodram to shape a rescue response. "More could have been done, more should have been done," the report states. "In the event, nothing was done."

There is also the recommendation of charges, relating to occupational safety and health (OSH) offences, against Kazim Ali Snr, the owner of Land and Marine Contracting Services Ltd (LMCS), and Paria's terminal operations manager Colin Piper. Mr Ali's son, Kazim Jnr, is one of the four who perished in the tragedy. However, there's a deadline of February 24, for action to be taken as the OSH Act stipulates a two-year time frame for prosecution after an alleged offence. This is a consideration most likely to be addressed by the OSH Agency.

The DPP will advise on whether he will proceed with the recommended charge against Paria or any other relevant charges.

The Government is also placed in the indelicate position of prosecuting itself. Paria is a wholly-owned state agency where every senior leadership position receives the implicit blessing of Cabinet through its appointed board.

The Government has done well in ensuring that there is a public record of the commission's findings but must further commit to ensuring that justice is done.

Meanwhile, there is nothing stopping the Government from implementing the 52 safety recommendations in the report.