GOVERNMENT'S continued stance on the appointment of a ministerial committee to probe the deaths of four divers involved in work relating to the Paria Fuel Trading Company does not inspire confidence.
That we may be in store for a repeat of history - involving a lack of transparency and true accountability - was made likelier by the announcements by Minister of Energy Stuart Young at Thursday's post-Cabinet media briefing.
The Government seems to believe that simply calling something 'independent' makes it so. It does not.
The committee that has been convened is a ministerial one. It will not only be subject to ministerial directives, but its operations will undoubtedly fall into the grey area that exists in relation to ministerial oversight of quasi-private state entities such as Paria.
The ministerial committee's duties to publish and forward findings to relevant authorities also seem subject to ministerial, and therefore Cabinet, fiat.
Its operations will also be muddied in the face of other official probes by statutory health and safety agencies and law-enforcement authorities.
Worse, however, was Mr Young's announcement of the chairman of the five-member committee without even being able to name two of the other committee members with whom this chairman will have to work.
The designated chairman was also revealed to be someone who appears to be a practising attorney. At the same time, when asked why no commission of enquiry was being appointed, the minister seemed to suggest the probe falls under the terms of Paria's production-sharing contracts.
Equally disconcerting is advice being issued to grieving families to get legal advice with regard to compensation, which suggests the Government is gearing up for litigation, as opposed to taking the bull by the horns and exploring on its own all of the implications of the failings that occurred during this episode.
Perhaps it is the anticipation of litigation that colours the Government's current thinking, as well as its failure unequivocally to promise full disclosure of the committee's findings.
With four people dead, it is also baffling that the State has not entertained the possibility that there is an urgent need for personnel or systems to step down or to be suspended pending investigative outcomes.
Ironically, the clouded and compromised approach of the State to all of this may well mirror conditions at Paria which, over decades, paved the way for last Friday's events.
To be clear, we cast no aspersions on the competencies or character of the committee members named thus far.
But the appointment of an attorney (even one with a family history evocative of the highest judicial standards) does not compensate for the fact that this is a matter for quasi-judicial determination.
We say again: Appoint a commission of enquiry.
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