Kevon Felmine

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan and Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador to this coun­try Eu­ge­nia Mar­cano Casa­do have in­ter­vened in the mat­ter of three miss­ing fish­er­men from Moru­ga. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ram­bachan said he is work­ing with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Em­bassy in Venezuela to de­ter­mine whether the men are in fact be­ing held at a mil­i­tary base off the coast of Venezuela. Ram­bachan said he had no idea if such a base ex­ists.

"I have been keep­ing in con­tact with the fam­i­lies. I re­al­ly want this to be re­solved," he said. In a re­lease, Am­bas­sador Mar­cano Casa­do said the Mil­i­tary At­tach&ea­cute; at the Em­bassy, in co­op­er­a­tion with the T&T Coast Guard, had tak­en ac­tion in­form­ing the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties in Venezuela about the sit­u­a­tion. She said Em­bassy of­fi­cials met with miss­ing fish­er­man Nigel Boodoo's wife. Mar­cano Casa­do as­sured that they are work­ing on the mat­ter.

On Jan­u­ary 11, fish­er­men, Stephan Charles, Nigel Boodoo and an­oth­er man iden­ti­fied on­ly as Hakim, left for an overnight fish­ing trip off the wa­ters of To­ba­go. Nine days lat­er, they are yet to be ac­count­ed for.

Charles' wife, Saman­tha, said by tele­phone yes­ter­day that she went to the Venezue­lan Em­bassy and sub­mit­ted a pho­to­graph of her hus­band. "They told me they are work­ing hard at try­ing to lo­cate the men," she said. Boodoo's wife, Clara, said she, too, has been in touch with the Em­bassy. Both fam­i­lies are op­ti­mistic that the men are alive and will re­turn home.