Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Af­ter years of protests and com­plaints of poor fish­ing fa­cil­i­ties, San Fer­nan­do West MP Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan has as­sured Bayshore fish­er­men that they will soon ben­e­fit from im­proved fish­ing de­pot fa­cil­i­ties.Dur­ing a tour of the area on Sat­ur­day, fish­er­men showed Seep­er­sad-Bachan weath­er and sea-blast dam­age done to their shed and hold­ing bay.The fish­er­men said that in ad­di­tion to safe­ty risks posed by the col­laps­ing shed, they faced oth­er chal­lenges, in­clud­ing a lack of light­ing and bar­ri­er fa­cil­i­ties to pre­vent sea wa­ter com­ing in­to the shed dur­ing high tide.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan, who is al­so the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs, as­sured res­i­dents that quick ac­tion would be tak­en."I know how heav­i­ly you de­pend on fish­ing for your sur­vival and source of in­come and hav­ing seen the dam­age and needs my­self, I will move quick­ly to en­sure this shed is re-en­forced and al­so, that you have a few ad­di­tion­al, hy­giene and stor­age fa­cil­i­ties," she said.The min­is­ter al­so told fish­er­men and res­i­dents that she would look at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of so­lar pow­ered light­ing as part of the Gov­ern­ment's thrust to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of re­new­able en­er­gy sources, as well as to min­imise the cost to res­i­dents.

Af­ter the tour, the min­is­ter al­so vis­it­ed a small nurs­ery gar­den where res­i­dents had been en­cour­ag­ing young peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in agri­cul­ture for em­ploy­ment.She was then briefed at the Do­min­ion House of Prayer, a church on the Mara­bel­la Train­line, on oth­er press­ing con­cerns in the dis­trict, in­clud­ing ed­u­ca­tion, safe­ty, poor drainage, ac­cess to recre­ation fa­cil­i­ties and the need for more em­ploy­ment.The min­is­ter, how­ev­er, told her con­stituents that they must ex­er­cise pa­tience.