Sascha Wil­son

The San Fer­nan­do Fish­ing Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Ltd is dis­ap­point­ed with what it calls the deaf­en­ing si­lence of the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and his min­is­ters to their cry for help.

“We are fight­ing for our sur­vival. The fish­ing in­dus­try is slow­ly shut­ting down,” lament­ed pres­i­dent Sal­im Gool.

The so­ci­ety sent a let­ter to the Prime Min­is­ter and copied it to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan, Agri­cul­ture Land and Fish­eries Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat and Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is sug­gest­ing that the Gov­ern­ment re­sume the im­por­ta­tion of reg­u­lar gaso­line.

“The let­ter was dat­ed Jan­u­ary 7. We asked for a re­sponse with­in 14 days, but up to now we have not got­ten a re­sponse. This is very bad. It seems the Gov­ern­ment don’t care about the fish­ing in­dus­try at all. Maybe they will nev­er re­spond,” Gool said.

He said this is the first time the fish­ing in­dus­try had been forced to reach out to the Gov­ern­ment for help to keep the in­dus­try afloat.

“We are not like Ca­roni Ltd and Petrotrin where the Gov­ern­ment lost mil­lions of dol­lars try­ing to keep it alive. We nev­er asked for that kind of help,” he al­so said.

In the let­ter, the fish­er­men com­plained that su­per gaso­line was not on­ly ex­pen­sive but al­so dam­aged their en­gines as they used more fu­el per hour than an av­er­age car.

Ask­ing for ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion, Gool stat­ed: “We are call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter and Min­istry of En­er­gy to make reg­u­lar gas avail­able for the fish­er­folks’ sake.

Gov­ern­ment, he said, should con­sid­er im­port­ing 50,000-100,000 bar­rels of reg­u­lar gas per month and not a mere 8,000 bar­rels per month.

The fish­er­folk have re­quest­ed a meet­ing with the prime min­is­ter and oth­er min­is­ters at a con­ve­nient time the San Fer­nan­do Fish­ing Com­plex, Kings Wharf.

Fol­low­ing the clo­sure of Petrotrin re­fin­ery, the gov­ern­ment ceased its im­por­ta­tion of reg­u­lar gas, which was used by fish­er­men.

The price of reg­u­lar gas was $2.60 per litre as op­posed to $4.97 for su­per un­lead­ed, $5.75 for pre­mi­um un­lead­ed, $3.41 for diesel and $1 for CNG.