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Sunday, June 29, 2025

Poor sales at Otaheite Bay force vendors to dump fish

by

825 days ago
20230326

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Over one hun­dred pounds of fish are dumped week­ly at the Ota­heite Bay as ven­dors grap­ple with poor sales caused by ex­or­bi­tant fish prices dur­ing the Lenten sea­son.

And even though the ven­dors have slashed their prices as low as pos­si­ble and some ven­dors are giv­ing away fish for free, they say they have no choice but to throw away cool­ers of rot­ten fish which did not sell.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Bay on Sun­day, on­ly a few cus­tomers were seen pur­chas­ing fish. Over a dozen ven­dors were still at the Bay try­ing to sell what­ev­er they could for as cheap as pos­si­ble.

King­fish and carite had dropped from $60 per pound to $45 per pound. Shark, which sold for $25 per pound at the start of Lent, had dropped to $18- $20 per pound. And her­rings which sold for $15 per pound was now be­ing sold for $10.

Fish ven­dor Suni­ta Cyril said her heart al­ways ached when­ev­er she threw away fish.

“It’s sad be­cause we know there are a lot of peo­ple who can­not af­ford food. Peo­ple come here with $5 and they could still get a fish to cook. When they come to buy we give them ex­tra. But we are sell­ing for as low as pos­si­ble and still, peo­ple just can­not af­ford to buy,” she said.

She ex­plained that while peo­ple may con­demn them for throw­ing away fish, they could not give away spoil fish to the pub­lic.

“Peo­ple could get sick or die. When the fish doesn’t sell we put it in cold stor­age and we hope that it will sell but af­ter a few days, the fish spoil and we have no choice but to throw it away,” she said.

Fish­er­man Ram­cha­ran Par­tap said high­er fu­el prices had caused the price of fish to es­ca­late.

“When a fish­er­man go out there and spend $1,000 in fu­el to go to sea to catch fish, he has to re­cov­er from the ven­dor what he spent. Then when the ven­dors buy it, they have to mark up the price a lit­tle so they too could make a prof­it. But as it stands now, every­one is los­ing be­cause the price of fu­el is high. The gov­ern­ment need to do some­thing about this,” Par­tap said.

Cus­tomer Mar­lon Solomon who spent $300 to buy fish said even though the price is high, peo­ple should sup­port the lo­cal fish­er­men.

“They do­ing the best they can and they work hard when they go out there,” he said.

An­oth­er cus­tomer, Hen­ry Khan, said he pre­ferred that the ven­dors throw away the fish rather than give it to cus­tomers

“Fish is some­thing that spoils quick­ly. If it doesn’t sell and it starts to spoil you have to throw it out,” he said.

At­i­ba Nicholas, who al­so came to buy fish, said the ven­dors should sell as cheap­ly as pos­si­ble be­cause of the state of the econ­o­my.

“Times are hard, peo­ple can’t af­ford,” he added.

Over the past few months, fish ven­dors and fish­er­folk have been call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to give them re­bates for fu­el. They say many are leav­ing the in­dus­try be­cause they could not af­ford to pay for fu­el.


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