RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Protests over high gas prices are es­ca­lat­ing even as Prime Min­is­ter Dr Keio­th Row­ley gets ready to ad­dress the na­tion lat­er to­day.

From 6 am on Thurs­day, at the Clax­ton Bay Junc­tion fish­er­men, taxi dri­vers and small busi­ness op­er­a­tors con­tin­ued the sec­ond day of road­blocks un­der the watch of the po­lice.

Led by the pres­i­dent of the Clax­ton Bay Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Nichol­son Seecha­ran, the fish­er­men sang a catchy tune-"Fish price gone up, enough is enough. From this morn­ing, the road will be blocked."

As mo­torists honked their horns, Seecha­ran shout­ed: "All yuh is road­block whole week!"

He said it was no longer fea­si­ble to spend $1,500 to buy gas, oil, ice and oth­er items for a fish­ing trip, on­ly to come back with a poor catch worth less than $1,500.

"The gas price that went up five times! When we used to pay $220 for a 20 gal­lon of gas with oil, it is now $560. That is al­most dou­bling the price. When you go with two booms of gas and don't catch it hurt­ing us. We can­not go to the sea when the price is so high. We need some­thing done now," Seecha­ran said.

He added, "This cri­sis is af­fect­ing not on­ly fish­er­men and taxi men, but it is af­fect­ing every cit­i­zen."

An­oth­er fish­er­man Fi­del Jef­frey said since the gas prices in­creased, peo­ple have be­come so des­per­ate that they have start­ed steal­ing from each oth­er.

"Men lost their nets yes­ter­day and to­day. We have no oth­er way to feed our fam­i­lies. This is wrong! They push­ing us to0\O far. We can­not sur­vive, some­thing has to be done to help us now," Jef­frey said.

He added, "This is not a UNC or a PNM thing. This is a sur­vival thing. It af­fect­ing us poor peo­ple."

An­oth­er fish­er­man Desmond Belfast added: " This sit­u­a­tion that the gov­ern­ment put us in has got­ten to­tal­ly out­ra­geous. At some point yes, prices will go up and we un­der­stand that but with­in a lit­tle pe­ri­od of time, they send up the gas price five times!"

He added: " The first time, we take it and man­aged. The sec­ond time it was hard but we man­aged but af­ter the third time and fourth time, now the fifth time, it is out­ra­geous!"

The is­land­wide protests over high gas prices start­ed this week with taxi dri­vers on Mon­day but lat­er gal­va­nized fish­er­men and small busi­ness own­ers to join.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Row­ley is ex­pect­ed to ad­dress the na­tion at 2:30 pm to­day. It is un­cer­tain whether he will be ad­dress­ing the in­creas­es in the cost of fu­el. Guardian Me­dia will bring you more as this sto­ry un­folds.