Sascha Wil­son

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has promised in­creased se­cu­ri­ty for fish­er­men fre­quent­ly at­tacked by pi­rates out at sea, as Gov­ern­ment moves to re­vive the fish­ing in­dus­try. Speak­ing at the of­fi­cial com­mis­sion­ing of the re­fur­bished $2 mil­lion Morne Di­a­blo fish­ing land­ing site on Wednes­day, the Prime Min­is­ter al­so dis­closed plans to in­tro­duce joint pa­trols with lo­cal and Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties to pro­tect fish­er­men. She said, "While I will not di­vulge na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues, what I can say is that the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has been man­dat­ed to ad­dress that on­go­ing prob­lem of pira­cy at sea which af­fects our fish­er­folk who ply their trade.

"Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to un­veil­ing a plan which not on­ly caters for more pa­trols and en­sur­ing that your phys­i­cal safe­ty is guar­an­teed, but we are al­so in the process of in­tu­it­ing diplo­mat­ic dis­cus­sions with the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties to ar­rive at a mu­tu­al joint pa­trol plan to pro­tect our fish­er­folk who may be blamed for fish­ing out­side our wa­ters." Re­veal­ing that 13 sim­i­lar land­ing sites were un­der re­fur­bish­ment across the coun­try, Per­sad-Biss­esar said: "To­day's func­tion al­so sig­nals Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to re­viv­ing the fish­ing in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go, in our very dili­gent and com­mit­ted move to en­sure our econ­o­my is di­ver­si­fied and that the agri­cul­ture sec­tor is re­vived and once more plays a vi­tal role in not on­ly eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, but al­so do­mes­tic food pro­duc­tion."

She added that for too long the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, and in par­tic­u­lar the fish­ing in­dus­try, had been ne­glect­ed, caus­ing it to de­cline. She al­so said it was cru­cial that they re­duced the over $500 mil­lion spent an­nu­al­ly on food im­por­ta­tion. Al­though T&T ex­port­ed fish to some mar­kets, she said: "The vol­ume of im­ports (of fish and fish prod­ucts) sug­gest that the lo­cal pro­duc­tion has not been sat­is­fy­ing the lo­cal de­mand." Not­ing that the fish­eries con­tri­bu­tion was rough­ly es­ti­mat­ed to be ten per cent of agri­cul­ture Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct and 0.1 per cent of the to­tal GDP, she said they must work dili­gent­ly to in­crease that.

Urg­ing fish­er­folks to do their part in piv­ot­ing the in­dus­try to the main­stay of the econ­o­my and food pro­duc­tion, she as­sured that Gov­ern­ment would raise the health and qual­i­ty stan­dards un­der which fish­er­men ply their trade to en­sure they met the lo­cal food and drugs (fish) reg­u­la­tions. Among the dig­ni­taries in at­ten­dance were Food and Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Em­manuel George, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Clifton de Coteau.