The sole survivor of the Paria-LMCS diving tragedy, Christopher Boodram, has welcomed a $1 million ex gratia payment from Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, saying it brings long-awaited relief to his family nearly four years after the disaster.
In an exclusive interview on the Trinidad and Tobago Today morning show on Friday, Mr. Boodram opened up about the long and difficult journey he has faced since Friday, February 25th, 2022, when he and four other divers, Kazim Ali Jr., Yusuf Henry, Fyzal Kurban, and Rishi Nagassar, were sucked into the pipeline while performing maintenance work on an oil pipeline for Paria Fuel Trading Company. Mr. Boodram was rescued that same day after crawling through the pipeline, however, the bodies of his fellow divers were recovered in the days after.
Speaking to Virmala Balkaran on the T&T Today show, he revealed that in the aftermath, he had to rely heavily on the support of his family as he coped with the physical and emotional scars left by the disaster.
He said the payment will ease some of the financial burdens his family has had to bear since 2022.
“It’s a breath of fresh air and I don’t know how much people know this, but since the accident, I’m unable to apply my skill and trade. And for that period of time, financially, things were tough because everything was just resting on my wife’s hands. Loans, bills, everything else just was in her hands. It was difficult. So this was a really, really, really good breath of fresh air.”
Ex-gratia payments were also made to the families of Mr. Nagassar and Mr. Kurban and will continue progressively to the remaining families in the period ahead. Mr. Boodram said those payments will also go a long way in helping the families of his deceased “brothers.”
“They lost their breadwinners, you know, and this happening now is a relief on everybody. They’re now able to pay their bills, their debts, and, you know, get some way of, some type of way for them to be able to help ease the burden of the bills and the stress that comes with financial burdens.”
Mr. Boodram also raised concerns about former Prime Minister Stuart Young’s announcement, made weeks before the April 28th, 2025 General Election, that his government would make an ex gratia payment of $1 million each to the divers.
“He used our case as an election gimmick, all right? You’re telling me weeks before the election, you know for sure that an ex-gratia payment wouldn’t be able to be, you know, fully completed, the processes to get the cheque signed or whatever is the case, right? You would dangle that in front of us, right? To show the nation that, you know, you’re doing something and you’re playing with our emotions and our livelihood, you know? Because when I heard Stuart Young announced that they’re going to make an ex-gratia payment of $1 million, I was ecstatic and mad at the same time. It was so much mixed feelings because of how it was done: I heard that over the media. Now, on the other hand, this administration, we was contacted the day before, right? In the morning and they notified us that they wanted to do an ex-gratia payment for us and XYZ and we came up.”
Reflecting on the tragedy, Mr. Boodram emphasised that the key to preventing similar incidents in the future lies in strict adherence to safety standards and protocols. He urged authorities and industry stakeholders to take proactive measures, highlighting that the lessons from his own experience should serve as a warning and a guide for safeguarding lives in the diving and maritime sectors.
“I would recommend is that companies ensure that their contractors are properly well insured and that they are equipped to deal with things like adhering with the health and safety standards, you know, in this case, right? Despite popular belief, the contractor who I was employed with, LMCS, did everything to the standard, you know. This was a genuine accident that happened, right? And what caused my friends, my brothers, to die was negligence on the parent company side. They restricted rescue and it wasn’t a lack of the contractor not trying to do rescue. It was Paria not allowing the contractors to do the rescue.”
Mr. Boodram also expressed gratitude to the public for keeping his family and the families of his co-workers in their thoughts and prayers during the most difficult moments.