Ce­dros fish­er­men are call­ing for more pa­trols, say­ing Venezue­lan pi­rates are at­tack­ing lo­cal fish­er­men in ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.

A day af­ter Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young vis­it­ed Ce­dros, pi­rates ac­cost­ed a group of fish­er­men off the Bonasse jet­ty and stole their nets. Dur­ing an in­ter­view at Fullar­ton Beach on Mon­day, fish­er­man Raesh Ram­dass said it was be­com­ing im­pos­si­ble to fish in lo­cal wa­ters be­cause the Venezue­lan pi­rates were op­er­at­ing open­ly at nights un­der the noses of the T&T Coast Guard. He said the pi­rates have moved out of the Venezue­lan rivers and were look­ing for easy tar­gets on the open seas.

"We see them all over here," Ram­dass said, point­ing to the coast.

Re­call­ing the or­deal, Ram­dass said they were fish­ing when they saw a group of men pick­ing up their nets. He said the pi­rates fled with the nets val­ued at over $30,000.

"We didn't pur­sue them be­cause we would have got­ten shoot," he added.

Ram­dass said im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the at­tack they re­port­ed it to the T&T Coast Guard but were told they should go to the Fish­eries Di­vi­sion.

An­oth­er fish­er­man, Rakesh Ram­dass, said they were frus­trat­ed be­cause they could no longer earn their liveli­hood.

"I have two chil­dren to mind. Things re­al­ly hard. Where I get­ting mon­ey to buy back nets?" he added.

His wife Christi­na Ram­saran said pi­rates were mak­ing their lives a liv­ing hell.

"We help­ing the Venezue­lans but they at­tack­ing us," she said, call­ing on the T&T Coast Guard to have more fre­quent pa­trols in the Ce­dros, Fullar­ton and Ica­cos area. (See ed­i­to­r­i­al on Page A18)

Fish­er­man Azard Mo­hammed, from Bonasse, said on Mon­day he res­cued Trinida­di­an fish­er­man Key­on Alexan­der, who was kid­napped for ran­som. Alexan­der, of Erin and his friend An­tho­ny George, jumped out of the kid­nap­pers' boat and swam for their lives. Mo­hammed found Alexan­der on top of an oil in­stal­la­tion plat­form at Sol­da­do Field on Mon­day night and took him home.

"It sad to see what these pi­rates and kid­nap­pers are do­ing to our fish­er­men. We want the T&T Coast Guard to help us," Mo­hammed said.

He added that since the Coast Guard fast pa­trol boat had moved out of the Ce­dros base the Venezue­lan pi­rates have been com­ing more fre­quent­ly in­to ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Ce­dros coun­cil­lor Shankar Teelucks­ingh ques­tioned why a Coast Guard ves­sel could not be sta­tioned out of the Ce­dros port at the bor­der of South­west Sol­da­do. He al­so ques­tioned whether the 360 radar at Green­hill base was mon­i­tor­ing all ves­sels com­ing in­to T&T wa­ters.

"We need to have tech­nol­o­gy work­ing and an in­ter­cep­tor ves­sel de­ployed from Ce­dros to help our fish­er­men," Teel­cuks­ingh said.

He added that the lay­off of hun­dreds of work­ers from In­land and Off­shore Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, as well as AR Singh Com­pa­ny, had forced some res­i­dents to re­turn to the sea to fish. Teelucks­ingh al­so called for a re-in­tro­duc­tion of the Ma­rine po­lice branch of the TT Po­lice Ser­vice.

But an of­fi­cial from the T&T Coast Guard said they have no in­for­ma­tion that Venezue­lan pi­rates were op­er­at­ing in lo­cal wa­ters. How­ev­er, in­ter­na­tion­al jour­nal­ists have re­port­ed the pres­ence of pi­rates who op­er­ate out of the Cano Man­amos Riv­er, a trib­u­tary of the Orinoco Riv­er which flows in­to the At­lantic. These gangs are said to be un­der the radar of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Po­lice Or­ga­ni­za­tion (In­ter­pol). - RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA