Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Three weeks ago, thick black oil washed in­to the Godineau swamp with the evening tide.

The oil blan­ket­ed the man­grove roots, killing the crabs and oys­ters which lived be­tween the roots. Since then, crab and oys­ter ven­dors who made a liv­ing in the swamp have found their pick­ings slim and are now cry­ing out for as­sis­tance.

Dur­ing a tour of the swamp yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the Crab Catch­ers and Oys­ters As­so­ci­a­tion of South Oropouche, Kishore Ram­s­ingh, said the ven­dors des­per­ate­ly need­ed help. "We make a liv­ing out of this swamp and the last oil spill come and dam­age our liveli­hood and we are look­ing to get some­one in au­thor­i­ty to see if they could help with a lit­tle com­pen­sa­tion be­cause this is we liv­ing here. "All the crabs dy­ing, all the oys­ters dy­ing, we don't know what to turn to...to get a dol­lar to go by," Ram­s­ingh said.

As the boat made its way down the riv­er, a black oily sub­stance was seen on man­grove roots. Ram­s­ingh said the ven­dors reached out to State-owned oil gi­ant, Petrotrin, but said: "No­body nev­er came to us to tell us any­thing. Every­thing just go to deaf ears. We asked to get of­fi­cials from Petrotrin (to vis­it) and no­body give us a re­ply yet."

Al­though the ven­dors are seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion from Petrotrin or mon­e­tary as­sis­tance from the Gov­ern­ment, Ram­s­ingh said they were not ask­ing for much. "We just look­ing for a lit­tle com­pen­sa­tion so we could sur­vive for the next few months. We don't ex­pect the Gov­ern­ment or the com­pa­ny to pay us for life. If we get a two or three months com­pen­sa­tion so the chem­i­cals and oil could die off from the soil so we could get back to our liveli­hood again," he added.

He said with the new school term around the cor­ner, the ven­dors were hop­ing for a speedy re­sponse. "School open­ing just now, plen­ty peo­ple you see­ing here right now have books to buy. We have chil­dren to send to school. We have gro­ceries to buy and right now it hard, it very hard. If any­body could help we, with a lit­tle gro­cery even, we would be very thank­ful," Ram­s­ingh said.

Dood­nath Mayrhoo, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Fyz­abad, said he was hop­ing the mat­ter will be raised in Cab­i­net to­day. "This is some­thing of na­tion­al im­por­tance and the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture (Clarence Ramb­harat) should take this first-hand and ad­dress it be­cause there are peo­ple af­fect­ed from Cen­tral all the way down to Ce­dros. "We are hop­ing to­mor­row at their Cab­i­net meet­ing that this is dis­cussed and Gov­ern­ment comes up with a plan that will as­sist the fish­er­men, the crab catch­ers and the oys­ter ven­dors," Mayrhoo said.

He said on Mon­day a let­ter was sent to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ask­ing for his in­ter­ven­tion.

"We called on the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture to do what they could to as­sist those fish­er­men. We are see­ing first-hand the pol­lu­tion where oil has come up and stuck against the oys­ter shells and the crabs and all oth­er crea­tures in the man­groves," he added.