Geisha Kow­lessar

To­day marks four months since nine fish­ing ves­sels were seized by of­fi­cers of the Coast Guard af­ter it was sus­pect­ed that they were in­volved in bunker­ing. But yes­ter­day, eight of the nine ves­sels were or­dered re­leased af­ter in­ves­ti­ga­tions which were con­duct­ed by the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry and the En­er­gy Min­istry re­vealed, ac­cord­ing to own­ers, there was no ev­i­dence to charge them with il­le­gal­ly sell­ing diesel. The ves­sels were seized dur­ing the height of the state of emer­gency when a then tough-talk­ing En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kelvin Ram­nar­ine de­clared war on peo­ple caught in the act of bunker­ing.

How­ev­er, at least two of the boat own­ers said they in­tend­ed to pur­sue all le­gal av­enues to re­cov­er loss­es which have amount­ed to hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars. Oth­er own­ers have al­so de­mand­ed that Ram­nar­ine give an ex­pla­na­tion charg­ing that they were vic­tims of "pol­i­tics" by the Gov­ern­ment. One own­er, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied for fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion said his loss of earn­ings for the past four months have amount­ed to be­tween $60,000 to $80,000. He said it was on­ly on Thurs­day that he was head­ing to the High Court to file an in­junc­tion to have his boat re­leased when he was in­formed that he was free to col­lect his boat.

"But I am still go­ing to file le­gal ac­tion for loss of earn­ings. We have not been giv­en any prop­er ex­pla­na­tion as to why our boats were held in the first place. "The En­er­gy Min­is­ter must give us an­swers be­cause when the boats were seized he was all over and the me­dia was tak­ing pic­tures and now he needs to face the boa­town­ers and tell us ex­act­ly what hap­pened," the own­er said. He said many of the own­ers were the sole bread­win­ners of their re­spec­tive fam­i­lies and Christ­mas proved even a more dif­fi­cult time as they could bare­ly make ends meet. Re­call­ing Sep­tem­ber 29, 2011 when his ves­sel was seized he said he had just pur­chased two tonnes of ice val­ued $1,000 when Coast Guard of­fi­cials pulled along­side and or­dered the boat to be tak­en to Staubles Bay.

"I showed them my bills for the ice but they didn't want to hear that. They said they seized the boat for il­le­gal diesel," the own­er added. An­oth­er own­er who was al­so at Staubles Bay yes­ter­day said his fo­cus was to "make up for lost in­come." "My boat is a long lin­er and we would be out at sea for 24 to 25 days.

Sen­si­tive mat­ter

When con­tact­ed Ram­nar­ine said he could not talk about the na­ture of the probe and could not al­so re­veal why the boats were or­dered to be re­leased. "It is a legal­ly sen­si­tive mat­ter," he added.

In­struc­tions giv­en by En­er­gy Min­istry

The boats were or­dered to be re­leased af­ter in­struc­tions were giv­en by the En­er­gy Min­istry on Thurs­day said pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer for the T&T Coast Guard Lieu­tenant Kirk Jean-Bap­tiste yes­ter­day. He said the Coast Guard of­fi­cials were still await­ing one own­er to present own­er­ship doc­u­ments be­fore the fi­nal ves­sel could be re­leased. Jean-Bap­tiste main­tained that the role of the Coast Guard was not to in­ves­ti­gate but sim­ply to hold the ves­sels un­til the probe has been com­plet­ed. "Cus­toms is an in­de­pen­dent en­ti­ty ca­pa­ble of con­duct­ing their own in­ves­ti­ga­tions and there­fore we do not get in­volved," Jean-Bap­tiste added.