THEY BOUGHT SILENCE FOR $5 MILLION. NOW THE COURTS ARE LISTENING.

BY: Staff -Writer

Three years ago on May 21st nineteen children died in a school dormitory that had padlocked grilles over its windows and doors and no fire extinguishers, no sand buckets, no meaningful safety measures of any kind. The building did not fail on its own. It failed because the state that built it, funded it, and bore responsibility for the children sleeping inside it never ensured the most basic conditions for their survival. That is not an allegation. That is a fact established in every legal filing now before the courts.

What followed was, if anything, worse. In the acute grief of July 2023, while parents were still burying their children, a delegation of government officials descended on Mahdia. Among them was the Attorney General, Anil Nandlall. Among them also — and this fact demands to be stated plainly — was an individual named Keoma Griffith, presented to the bereaved families as counsel. He was not their counsel. He had arrived with the State.

WHAT THE PARENTS WERE TOLD

“Sign this agreement or you have nothing else to get from the government.”
— State officials to bereaved parents, as reported in sworn accounts before the courts
“They told us not to discuss the details of the agreement with anyone. We didn’t get any legal advice.”
— A parent of one of the nineteen victims, as reported by Stabroek News
“I feel guilty, like I sold my child’s life for 5 million.”
— A mother, on the $5 million settlement signed without independent legal advice

The Attorney General told at least one parent that the government could not be sued because it did not light the fire. What he did not explain — and what the families were in no position to interrogate, having just buried children — was that liability does not require lighting a match. It requires a duty of care. And the state’s duty to those children in that dormitory could not have been clearer or more thoroughly abandoned.

The agreements the parents were pressed to sign contained a clause absolving the government of liability. Parents were explicitly told not to share the details. No independent attorney was in that room to advise them. And yet the agreements were signed — because grief, powerlessness, and the explicit threat of receiving nothing at all are extraordinarily effective instruments of coercion.

ESTABLISHED FACTS
→ Nineteen children died in the Mahdia dormitory fire on May 21, 2023.
→ The facility had padlocked, grilled windows and doors with no emergency egress.
→ No fire extinguishers or sand buckets were present on the premises.
→ In July 2023, parents signed $5M-per-child agreements without independent legal counsel.
→ Agreements included clauses absolving the government of liability.
→ Parents were told not to discuss the agreement’s terms with anyone.
→ The individual presented as families’ “counsel,” Keoma Griffith, travelled with the State delegation — not independently of it.
→ Keoma Griffith was subsequently appointed Minister of Labour and Manpower Planning.
→ A High Court has since set aside one such agreement, signed under duress, clearing the way for independent judicial valuation.
→ Claims filed on behalf of 11 families now exceed $400 million per child.

THE REWARD FOR SERVICES RENDERED
Keoma Griffith was not a prominent political figure before July 2023. He was present at that meeting in Mahdia in a capacity that, to the grieving parents, appeared to be legal representation. He was not representing them. He was present with — and on the side of — the government whose liability was the very subject of the agreements being signed. That is not the role of independent counsel. That is the role of a State facilitator.
That same Keoma Griffith has since been elevated to the Cabinet as Minister of Labour and Manpower Planning. He now stands at the intersection of protest, workers’ rights, and state authority — and he is, at this very moment, doing what he has apparently been hired to do: serving the government’s interests over those of the people who needed protection. The Mahdia families needed protection in July 2023. Workers need protection today. The pattern is consistent.

WHERE THINGS STAND NOW
▸ May 21, 2023 — Nineteen children die in the Mahdia dormitory fire. The facility had no functioning fire safety measures and exits were obstructed.
▸ July 3, 2023 — AG Nandlall, Keoma Griffith, and other officials visit Mahdia. Parents are told to sign $5M agreements or “have nothing.” No independent legal counsel is present. Agreements contain liability waivers. Parents are told not to discuss the terms.

2024–2025 — Attorneys Darren Wade and Eusi Anderson file legal challenges. Wade represents 11 families from Micobie and Chenapau, with claims exceeding $400M per child. Anderson secures a High Court ruling setting aside one coerced agreement.
▸ May 2025 — International psychiatric experts evaluate survivors to document ongoing trauma. Families report the government has abandoned pledges to build memorials and secure burial grounds.

The High Court’s decision to set aside the agreement signed by Valerie Carter — whose twin daughters perished — is not just a legal development. It is a judicial acknowledgment that what happened in that room in Mahdia was not a fair settlement. It was a transaction conducted under duress, facilitated by a government that used grief, desperation, and the threat of destitution to close out its liability for nineteen dead children.

The State has also failed to compensate survivors who carry physical injuries and severe psychological trauma. It has not built the memorials it promised. It has not secured the burial grounds it pledged. These are not oversights. They are the predictable behaviour of an administration that, from the very night of the fire, has treated accountability as a threat to be managed rather than an obligation to be met.

The families who refused to be silenced deserve to be acknowledged clearly on this anniversary. The High Court ruling that cracked the wall the government built around its own liability, and the $400 million-per-child claims that refuse to reduce a child’s life to an administrative line item, are not merely legal proceedings. They are acts of resistance against a pattern of state impunity.

Nineteen children should be alive today. They are not, because a government facility failed them in every way a facility can fail. The administration’s response — dispatching officials to seal the grief of parents before it could become litigation, and then rewarding the facilitator of that operation with a Cabinet seat — is its own indictment. The courts are now writing a different ending. And this publication will be watching every word of it.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 592 𝙂𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙂𝙪𝙮𝙖𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙘, 𝙥𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙖𝙛𝙛𝙖𝙞𝙧𝙨.