South Oropouche oys­ters, crab and conch catch­ers on Mon­day staged a protest over the con­struc­tion of a gate across their on­ly ac­cess road to a near­by riv­er where they source their pro­duce.

They com­plained that their liveli­hood is be­ing ham­pered and called on Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan to in­ter­vene.

They are claim­ing that a pub­lic road had been blocked. How­ev­er, own­ers of Edan K Prop­er­ties Ltd is claim­ing that the land, in­clud­ing the road, is pri­vate­ly owned by them.

The road runs to the back of the Anand Low Price Su­per­mar­ket along the South Trunk Road, South Oropouche.

Oys­ter ven­dor Asha Syl­van said over 30 oys­ter, conch and crab catch­ers are af­fect­ed, as well as scores of peo­ple who camp, fish, and eco-tourists. She said the prop­er­ty was fenced last Thurs­day and on Fri­day the gate was con­struct­ed.

“We use that road to ac­cess the riv­er where our boats are. There has a slip­way for the boats. We use to be in an­oth­er area but when they start­ed to build the high­way un­der the last gov­ern­ment, they (gov­ern­ment) moved us to here in 2013. Now, this busi­ness­man say­ing he owns the land and block us off. We want to call on the min­is­ter (Ro­han Sinanan) to see if he could sort this out for is.”

She asked if the min­is­ter could build an­oth­er road for them to ac­cess the riv­er.

Ven­dor Richard Ram­ta­hal claimed he has been ac­cess­ing the riv­er through that lo­ca­tion since the 1980s.

“We in a re­al sit­u­a­tion here with re­gards to all per­sons who use the riv­er for their liveli­hood and recre­ation. Peo­ple come here on week­ends, fam­i­lies come, they camp out, they take a boat down the riv­er to see the flamin­gos and oth­er an­i­mals. They al­so fish.”

He said there is al­so a shed on the site to re­pair boats.

“We are hop­ing to get a speedy res­o­lu­tion to this.”

How­ev­er, a di­rec­tor of the com­pa­ny (who asked not to be named) said they pur­chased the land in the ear­ly 2000s. He said they de­cid­ed to fence the prop­er­ty and con­struct the gate last week be­cause of il­le­gal dump­ing on the site. He said trucks would dump a large amount of waste on the land.

“We built the roads, all the drains, sub­di­vid­ed the plots, we sold to in­di­vid­ual ten­ants.” He said if po­ten­tial buy­ers were to see garbage on the land they would not be in­ter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing it.

The di­rec­tor said they cleaned the prop­er­ty, put up no dump­ing signs and then fenced it to pro­tect their in­ter­ests.

“We have no prob­lem with peo­ple us­ing the riv­er but they will have to have a dif­fer­ent ac­cess point,” he said.