The TORs should be made public

Aug 13, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – It was announced at the swearing-in ceremony of the Commissioners of the Commission of Inquiry into the school dormitory fire at Mahdia that the Commission would take immediate effect. But the law has a separate requirement before a Commission of Inquiry (COI) can commence.

Section 16 of the Commissions of Inquiry Act requires that the Commission be first published in the Official Gazette. As at the time of writing of this column, no such notice has been published in the digital version of the Gazette of Guyana. It is therefore not clear whether the Commission has been published in the Official Gazette.

The law does not require that the Terms of Reference (TORs) be published. But there can be little harm in doing so as part of the publication of the Commission especially since the TORs were not announced during the ceremony to swear-in the Commissioners. As at the time of writing this column, they have also not been published in the media.

It is strange that our media houses have not yet lamented this absence. The TORs are important to understanding the scope of the inquiry. Even though we are told that the COI can make recommendations, these recommendations cannot be outside of the scope of the TORs.

It was hoped that given the national importance of this COI, that the government would have invited other national stakeholders to be part of the process of drafting the original TORs. The Opposition, for example, had asked to make an input into the drafting of the Terms of Reference (TOR). It had demanded that the COI should evaluate the structural integrity, fire safety measures, emergency exits, and overall compliance with relevant regulations in these facilities.   There has been no indication that the Opposition was involved in the preparation of the TOR.

The Amerindian Peoples Association has requested to be consulted since it felt that the TORs should benefit from persons with knowledge of indigenous communities, including the one most affected by the tragedy.

It is not clear whether any Indigenous peoples’ organizations were consulted in the formulation of the COI. But if they were not, that would hardly be surprising because that has been the traditional modus operandi of the PPPC governments.

Yet, there was precedence for consultations with the Opposition. During the tenure of Donald Ramotar, the Opposition parties in the National Assembly were consulted with tin relation to how the Linden Commission of Inquiry should proceed. Arising out of that process, it was agreed that the COI would be established in a consultative manner and its TORs developed in a consensual manner.

Twenty children lost their lives in the Mahdia fire. And to think that notwithstanding what the President said about being sensitive to the need to give the families the necessary time to grieve, it is unacceptable that the COI should have been delayed for almost 11 weeks. It is even more unpardonable that the TORs have not yet been made public.

What has been made public is that the government has offered assistance to the families. That assistance is substantial. Millions of dollars are involved.

The government would know that assistance and support are not the same as compensation and that any assistance offered has to be without prejudice to the right of the families to seek financial compensation.

Yet inexplicably, we are reading that the families of the children who died or were injured were made to sign a document absolving the state from any future liability.

Surely, that report has to be flawed. Support and assistance to the families cannot be confused with compensation. To date no member of the government has come forward to deny that such a document was presented for signature to the families. There may be a need for a COI into why if this report is true that it was necessary for such an agreement to be signed.

This is a serious development. If such a document was presented to the families, then something really wrong is going on in the Co-operative Republic of Guyana.  If it is true that the families were indeed given such a document to sign, then the entire nation should come out and condemn such a move. But more importantly, if it did happen, the document should be rescinded.

No one expects the present COI to pronounce on liability. The Linden Commission of Inquiry did so but the sums recommended were hotly contested and the same is likely in this instance. So, it best if when the time comes for the compensation issue to be settled through a class action suit against the government.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• Commission of Inquiry, Mahdia, Official Gazette, publication, School

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