Zahra Gor­don

Fish­er­men of the Care­nage fish mar­ket say they plan to seek com­pen­sa­tion from Gov­ern­ment af­ter an oil spill pre­vent­ed them from work­ing for four days ear­li­er this week. The spill oc­curred when a derelict work boat, an­chored be­tween the the Yacht Club and Five Is­lands, Ch­aguara­mas, sank on Sun­day. The boat was said to be­long to US-based ma­rine sup­port com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, the op­er­a­tions man­ag­er at the com­pa­ny claimed the ves­sel was sold ear­li­er this year but was un­able to di­vulge the name of its new own­ers. The boat in ques­tion is one of many moored to­geth­er in that lo­ca­tion. Care­nage fish­er­man Han­iff la For­est said the spill had dam­aged fish­ing equip­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly nets, which had to be thrown away af­ter be­ing caked with oil. He said loss­es to the fish­er­folk could run in­to thou­sands of dol­lars.

La For­est, a for­mer po­lice­man, said live bait al­so was re­pelled by the oil spill and fish­er­men were forced to de­vote a con­sid­er­able amount of time clean­ing up their boats and fish­ing gear rather than ac­tu­al­ly work­ing. Of­fi­cials from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), T&T Coast Guard and Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion said they had not re­ceived any re­ports about an oil spill in that area. Mar­itime Ser­vices deputy di­rec­tor, Cpt Kir­ton Hug­gins, said the boats in ques­tion had been grant­ed per­mis­sion to an­chor with­in the past year though he was un­sure if they had ex­ceed­ed the des­ig­nat­ed pe­ri­od of their stay. Gary Aboud, sec­re­tary of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS), be­lieves the boats have been in the area much longer than they should and in fact are the same boats at the root of a ma­jor oil spill in 2006. He said all the nec­es­sary laws to pros­e­cute com­pa­nies that dump boats in T&T wa­ters were in place, both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, but were not en­forced as they should be. He said tax­pay­ers should not be re­spon­si­ble for the cost of clean-up ex­er­cis­es when com­pa­nies dumped boats rather than dis­man­tled them as stip­u­lat­ed. The fish­er­men said they have made re­ports to the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs' Fish­eries Di­vi­sion but no of­fi­cials could be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.