Christopher Boodram wants justice. The lone survivor of the Paria diving tragedy, has consistently said that he wants justice for his friends and colleagues and their families. Speaking to Power 102 Digital recently he accused Paria officials of making reckless decision that led to the deaths of his four friends, after they all became sucked into and stuck in a thirty-inch pipeline on February 25th 2024. Divers Fyzal Kurban, Kazim Ali Jr, Rishi Nagassar and Yusuf Henry died sometime between 27th and 28th February 2022.
Boodram, who outlined the gruelling ordeal of how he had to leave his friends , whom he had spoken to inside the pipeline, was able to escape the pipeline into which he had been sucked at the Berth 6 facilities, off Pointe-a-Pierre, on February 25, 2022.
The Commission of Inquiry into the tragedy highlighted the fact that Paria had no plan, nor was there any attempt to rescue the trapped divers, even after Boodram emerged from the pipeline about five hours later alive.
Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley, responding to a question in Parliament on Friday said that the Government could not intervene in the issue of compensation as the commission’s findings were being reviewed by Paria’s board of directors. Dr Rowley said: “This isn’t a matter for the Government to jump in. This is a matter where a State company has an accident in a situation where a contract was being executed by a private company. These are the facts.
“So the Government cannot just jump in and decide to pay compensation willy-nilly all over the place. We have to follow processes right now… the Office of the Prime Minister is not at this time involved in this matter.”
Christopher Boodram responded to the PM’s statements said that he was disappointed in the Prime Minister’s response saying: “I am disappointed in the statement of the Prime Minister, and he has not really taken up any type of pro-action or action at all towards this situation. As a Prime Minister, it is his duty to be more sympathetic with the people and he is not. He was sympathetic to the situation in Guyana but showed his own people no sympathy,” Boodram has supported the recommendations that the families be compensated.