RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Strug­gling with bur­den­some fu­el costs and a de­cline in catch, fish­er­men are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to up­grade the fu­el re­bate pro­gramme.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, the pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Fish­ing Co­op­er­a­tive Sal­im Gool said the six price hikes which oc­curred un­der the tenure of the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment had caused a 50 per cent de­crease in the fish­er­folk pop­u­la­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in South Trinidad.

Gool said peo­ple could no longer af­ford to fish far out and apart from the dan­gers, they could no longer main­tain their boats, en­gines and nets.

“Peo­ple fish­ing with holes in their nets and their boats are in need of re­pair but they no longer get sub­si­dies for that. We used to get reg­u­lar fu­el long ago which was cheap and good for our en­gines but now we get­ting fu­el that de­stroys the pis­tons in our en­gines,” he lament­ed.

At the Ota­heite Fish­ing port, fish­er­men al­so called for re­bates to be up­grad­ed.

Fish­er­man Ram­nar­ine See­gob­in said, “Fish­er­men strug­gle every day. We go out and some­times we can­not cov­er the cost of our trip be­cause fu­el is so ex­pen­sive.”

Rati­ram calls on PM to act

Mean­while, MP for Cou­va Noth Ravi Rati­ram al­so called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to ur­gent­ly re­vise the out­dat­ed fu­el re­bate sub­sidy for fish­er­folk. His call came af­ter Dr Row­ley re­spond­ed to a crit­i­cal par­lia­men­tary in­quiry about the time­line for up­dat­ing this im­por­tant sub­sidy.

Rati­ram said the cur­rent fu­el re­bate rates have re­mained un­changed for decades, with gaso­line at $0.12 per litre, diesel at $0.10 per litre, and oil at $0.75 per litre.

He said in a 2022 Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing, he made a sim­i­lar call but no changes were made.

Say­ing fish­er­folk were fac­ing a sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial bur­den be­cause of nu­mer­ous fu­el price hikes since 2015, Rati­ram said, “On Oc­to­ber 5, 2015, the price of su­per un­lead­ed gaso­line was TT$3.11 per litre and diesel was TT$1.72 per litre. By Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022, these prices had risen to TT$6.97 per litre for su­per un­lead­ed and TT$4.41 per litre for diesel,” he re­vealed.

“Our fish­er­folk have been bat­tered by six fu­el price hikes un­der this ad­min­is­tra­tion, yet the re­bate re­mains shame­ful­ly out­dat­ed and in­suf­fi­cient,” Rati­ram said.

He added, “The Row­ley-led Gov­ern­ment has con­tin­u­al­ly ne­glect­ed the press­ing needs of our hard­work­ing fish­er­folk, de­spite nu­mer­ous promis­es to re­assess and ad­just the re­bate.”

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley had ac­knowl­edged in his 2022 bud­get ad­dress that the fu­el re­bate for fish­er­folk was not be­ing ful­ly utilised and pledged to re­view the mat­ter.

Since 2023, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries have been host­ing sev­er­al Stake­hold­er Con­sul­ta­tions on the New Fish­eries Man­age­ment Bill 2023, which aims to cre­ate a ro­bust le­gal ba­sis to al­low the fish­eries ad­min­is­tra­tions to ef­fec­tive­ly reg­u­late the fish­ing in­dus­try and man­age the fish­eries re­sources.

The Gov­ern­ment has com­plained of over­fish­ing in T&T say­ing fish­er­men must con­form to prop­er reg­u­la­tions.