Attorney Prakash Ramadhar said he will be writing to the Attorney General in a week to begin the judicial settlement process for his clients – the families of the men who died in the Paria diving tragedy – if the process is not initiated this week.

Speaking to media at his office in Curepe on May 12, he said he hoped the families could receive payment as soon as possible.

On February 25, 2022, Christopher Boodram together with co-workers Kazim Ali Jr, Fyzal Kurban, Yusuf Henry and Rishi Nagassar, were repairing a 30-inch pipeline at Paria’s Pointe-a-Pierre facility when they were sucked into it. Only Boodram survived.

On March 3, then-prime minister Stuart Young announced that government would pay $1 million to Boodram, and $1 million each to the families of the deceased divers as ex-gratia payments.

On April 22, the Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries wrote to the attorneys asking them where to send the payment, a day after Ramadhar initiated a public countdown on the issue.

On April 25, the government again wrote to the attorneys saying they needed to have letters of administration before payment could be made.

On May 8, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said she would compensate the families and suggested a judicial settlement to eliminate possible conflicts of interest and resolving the issue of payments.

Ramadhar congratulated Persad-Bissessar for her robust approach before the election where she said it was the intent of the UNC coalition government to ensure that the families received an ex-gratia payment.

“The Prime Minister said last week she would live to her word, and I’ve known her to be forthright to these things, and said at the same time she would prefer a judicial conference, a formal hearing so whatever we do would have a level of transparency and the approval of a court system. I am all for that.

“She has always maintained that if there is justice to be had for people, let them have it, and the technical, bureaucratic issues will follow.”

He reminded that letters of administration take an extremely long time to achieve, so he thought Persad-Bissessar’s suggestion of a judicial conference is the best way forward.

“In relation to one of the families there is no problem, but as the PM indicated, there are several people who are not readily evidenced as being members of the family. If we had known that would be necessary, we could have sorted that out before the election.

“In order to achieve that level of transparency and integrity of the process, I think she was completely correct.

“We are awaiting either a letter from the AG and if we don’t hear from him in a week, we will be writing to him to trigger that process to bring a level of comfort to the families in the shortest possible time.”

Ramadhar explained there are two streams within the judicial system – litigation or the judges themselves can sit over a matter.

“This is done in a lot of cases, to have a mediation process. They make suggestions to both sides, put all you have before the judge, the judge m