Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The All-To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AT­FA) has crit­i­cised the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for the $50 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion to To­ba­go from the mid-year bud­get re­view for oil spill re­cov­ery. Pres­i­dent of AT­FA, Cur­tis Dou­glas, said the al­lo­ca­tion was not near­ly enough, call­ing it an at­tack on the is­land’s fish­er­men and an at­tempt to in­cite vi­o­lence among To­bag­o­ni­ans.

He fur­ther said it was an in­sult to the peo­ple of To­ba­go. “It’s re­al­ly laugh­able,” Dou­glas told Guardian Me­dia. “It makes me be­lieve that the ‘pow­ers that be’ in Trinidad do not re­al­ly care about To­ba­go, To­ba­go’s liveli­hood and the peo­ple of To­ba­go.”

He said he was quite dis­turbed that not even half that amount was of­fered by the Gov­ern­ment to help To­ba­go prop­er­ly re­cov­er from the dis­as­trous oil spill, es­pe­cial­ly since it was the fish­er­folk who were the first re­spon­ders when the oil spill oc­curred. “They were the ones who laid the boom so that the boat would be able to dock to bring food from Trinidad,” he re­count­ed.

Dou­glas said the mem­bers of the fish­ing in­dus­try have suf­fered tremen­dous loss­es and are still in­cur­ring loss­es. “We would have sent to the THA Chief Sec­re­tary [a doc­u­ment show­ing] over $14 mil­lion in loss­es,” he not­ed. “Fish­er­men can’t pay their loans, or [take care of] their fam­i­lies, or send their chil­dren to school.” “Ven­dors can’t sell any­more. They have to be re­lo­cat­ed,” he said.

“As it stands now, there is a perime­ter where you can­not go, where the Min­istry of En­er­gy would have quar­an­tined. You can­not go there or ac­cess that site. We can­not even go to catch bait even though the shores of the wa­ters of To­ba­go were cleaned up.” And while Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said To­ba­go will try its best to clear out­stand­ing debts in­curred from the oil spill dis­as­ter from the al­lo­ca­tion, Dou­glas pre­dicts fish­er­men should not an­tic­i­pate any re­lief for the al­lo­ca­tion.

“The mood of the To­ba­go fish­ing di­as­po­ra is very an­gry, and this move by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance is one where they are try­ing to in­cite vi­o­lence in the hearts of To­bag­o­ni­ans, and we are not pre­pared to be bait­ed like that.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment ‘s de­ci­sion to al­lo­cate $50 mil­lion of the $153 mil­lion re­quest­ed by the THA was in­ter­pret­ed as dis­re­spect and an at­tempt to kill the is­land’s fish­ing in­dus­try. Mean­while, Au­gus­tine and the To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber have said that at a time when To­ba­go needs fund­ing the most, the is­land has been left short-changed.