ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A meet­ing held by the To­ba­go Oil Spill Re­lief Com­mit­tee to ad­dress com­pen­sa­tion for fish­er­folk af­fect­ed by the Feb­ru­ary 7 oil spill end­ed in frus­tra­tion and anger on Mon­day evening.

Fish­er­men, who said they had been en­dur­ing eco­nom­ic loss­es since the in­ci­dent, ex­pect­ed to hear about prompt com­pen­sa­tion. In­stead, they were met with strin­gent re­quire­ments and an ap­proach­ing dead­line.

Sumwat­ty Ramkissoon, a fish­er­woman said she was up­set about the process.

“Al­lyuh bet­ter give me my mon­ey be­fore I dead. Pay me be­fore I dead. Don’t wait un­til five, six, ten years go­ing down the line and the fish­er­men still strug­gling here. We can’t get noth­ing.”

This wasn’t a re­quest, but one of the many de­mands made by the fish­er­folk at the Food Hub in Shaw Park. 

The com­mit­tee pro­posed that all claims be sub­mit­ted by Ju­ly 22, spark­ing im­me­di­ate dis­con­tent among the au­di­ence. 

Some fish­er­folk cursed while oth­ers shift­ed in dis­com­fort af­ter hear­ing this.

A fish­er­man ar­gued that the process was bur­dened with un­re­al­is­tic de­mands and ex­ces­sive red tape, mak­ing it near­ly im­pos­si­ble to ac­cess the promised com­pen­sa­tion.

But in de­fence, T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Pol­lu­tion Com­pen­sa­tion Fund An­drew Tay­lor as­sured every­one af­fect­ed would be com­pen­sat­ed.

He said, “Every­thing in your nar­ra­tive as part of your claim ex­plain­ing how much you pay per month will add to your claim as well.

“If you say you were mak­ing this and you lose this much, then that claim will be­come a valid claim and you will be able to re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion re­gard­less of an ex­act re­ceipt.

“If you sold ten king fish a day and you have been do­ing that for years ... then you put in a claim for the loss of the ten. But it’s when some­one comes and says they are mak­ing 100 in a day and they didn’t have that avail­able in the wa­ter then those kinds of claims get re­ject­ed. Le­git­i­mate loss­es are go­ing to get through even re­gard­less of not hav­ing an ex­act re­ceipt,” Tay­lor said.

The com­mit­tee ini­tial­ly stat­ed that proof of loss could be as sim­ple as pho­tos, ex­pla­na­tions, or any form of doc­u­men­ta­tion. How­ev­er, the fish­er­folk found that in prac­tice, the re­quire­ments were far more com­plex. Some left the con­sul­ta­tion mid­way, fed up with what they called, bu­reau­cra­cy and de­lays.

Fish­er­man Er­win Nicholas lament­ed the treat­ment of fish­er­men on the is­land, es­pe­cial­ly in the oil spill dis­as­ter.

“When some­thing like this hap­pens it shows me plain and straight that the per­son at the head ta­ble, it’s like they don’t want the fish­er­man to get noth­ing.”

De­spite the com­mit­tee’s re­as­sur­ance that fish­er­men’s claims would be ho­n­oured, the mood among the fish­er­folk was bleak.

The Gulf­stream barge over­turned off the Coast of Cove spew­ing bunker fu­el and dev­as­tat­ing parts of the is­land’s ecosys­tem.