Lone survivor: $m payment, ‘breath of fresh air’

LONE survivor of the 2022 Paria diving tragedy, Christopher Boodram, has described receiving a $1 million ex gratia payment from government as a “breath of fresh air.”

Speaking on the TT Today programme, on state-owned television station TTT, on January 23, Boodram said he has been unable to work since surviving the horrific accident which claimed the lives of fellow divers Faizal Kurban, Yusuff Henry, Rishi Nagessar and Kazim Ali Jr.

“I am unable to apply my skill and trade and for that period of time, financially, things were tough ‘cause everything just rest on my wife’s hands – bills, loans and everything else were in her hands and it was difficult. So this was really, really a breath of fresh air.”

The divers were performing maintenance on a 30-inch underwater pipeline at Berth 6, Pointe-a-Pierre, on February 25, 2022, when they were suddenly sucked into the line by a powerful differential pressure event, known as Delta P.

Boodram was the only one to escape.

He said that since the incident, he has gotten closer to the families of his colleagues who perished. He said the ex gratia payments would also help them pay their bills and their debts since losing their breadwinners.

“I’m really grateful and thankful for our Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and her cabinet for making this decision and I’m sure my colleagues and brothers’ wives are feeling the same way too and we thankful.”

He commended his wife’s strength in the aftermath of the incident, as, in addition to financially supporting the family, she also had to help him through his trauma.

Asked by host Virmala Balkaran whether he held any bitterness toward the previous government administration for not compensating the families, Boodram said: “I wouldn’t say bitterness, but at the end of the day, the previous administration treated us like dogs. They didn’t try to help us, or assist us.”

“The former prime minister, well former former prime minister (Dr Keith Rowley), agreed to only meet us after being pressured by the media and public and when he did meet us, it was a written script.

“He barely allowed us to express ourselves. In that meeting, I had to interject myself more than once to get a point across to him and he already had his outcome set. Even after, when the former prime minister (Stuart Young) was appointed, he used our case as an election gimmick.

“You telling me weeks before the election, you know for sure that an ex gratia payment wouldn’t be able to be fully completed...you dangle that in front of us to show the nation that you doing something and you playing with our emotions and livelihood.”

Upon hearing Young’s April 3 announcement of the payment, Boodram said he was simultaneously ecstatic and angered. Happy for the money, but mad that he found out over the media. He said the current administration contacted him on January 21 to inform them about the payment before it was announced to the public.

In a CNC3 interview outside the Red House on January 23, Young said he was happy the families received the ex gratia payment but said it was “nothing new” as it was the carrying out what his cabinet decided last year.

“I’d also expressed to our population via a post-cabinet conference the difficulties that we faced as a government in trying to go through the legal means of getting it done and the frustration, in particular, as minister of energy and then as the prime minister, to make sure the families got something whilst their matters were still proceeding through the court system...if that is the way it had to proceed,” Young said.

He added: “I think the population would see and they could make their own judgements as to the type of politics that were played out, but I am happy that those two families got the money that cabinet had decided in April 2025 they should get as ex gratia payments.”

On January 22, the Prime Minister presented the payments to Boodram and the families of Nagessar and Kurban at the Diplomatic Centre. A release on the same day said the other families would also be paid soon.