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Monday, February 17, 2025

Cedros/Icacos fishermen appeal to Govt: Save us from Guardia Nacional

by

20121129

Ter­ri­fied fish­er­men from the south-west­ern penin­su­la are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to set up a Venezue­lan Con­sulate in Ica­cos, claim­ing that the Guardia Na­cional is ter­ror­is­ing lo­cal fish­er­men as they ply their trade in ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters. They are al­so call­ing for a re­new­al of a treaty with the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, which will al­low them to fish two miles off the Venezue­lan coast.

Speak­ing at the Fullar­ton Fish Land­ing site yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the Bam­boo Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Se­u­nath Dal­bar­ry said more than 1,000 fish­er­men from Ica­cos, Ce­dros, Bam­boo, Fullar­ton, St Marie, Bonasse, Los Gal­los and Point Co­co were in des­per­ate need of help. Apart from dwin­dling fish stocks, pol­lu­tion of the sea and ex­pan­sion of con­tra­band trade, Dal­bar­ry said fish­er­men were now fac­ing in­tim­i­da­tion from the Venezue­lan Guardia Na­cional.

He al­leged that the Guardia Na­cional has been charg­ing fish­er­men US$200 a month to fish in Venezue­lan wa­ters. Those who can­not pay are of­ten chased in ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters and whisked away to Ped­er­nales, Venezuela, where they are charged.

Jer­ry Para­dath and Berg­er Sad­hoo, who were vic­tims of such an at­tack, said the in­tim­i­da­tion was grow­ing. Plead­ing for gov­ern­ment's in­ter­ven­tion, Para­dath said he and Sad­hoo were fish­ing about a quar­ter mile from the Ica­cos point last Ju­ly when the Guardia Na­cional fol­lowed them to Sol­da­do Rock and fired at them.

"We ran from west to east and they came at us and braced us. One of them point­ed a gun bar­rel at a fish­er­man's knee. We drove off and we even­tu­al­ly sought help from a Petrotrin Trin­mar barge. By the time we called the T&T Coast Guard, the Venezue­lan mil­i­tary left," Para­dath said.

He said T&T's fish stocks were fast de­plet­ing be­cause of shrimp trawl­ing and pol­lu­tion from in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion, so many fish­er­men opt­ed to pay the tax to the Guardia Na­cional in re­turn for per­mis­sion to fish in Venezuela's wa­ters.

"There is a basin in the north field which is 40 feet in depth about four miles from the Ica­cos shore. This pol­lu­tion is de­stroy­ing the seabed and dur­ing bad weath­er the rough seas cause the sed­i­ment from the pol­lut­ed basin to spread. It is de­stroy­ing all our sea­weeds so we can­not catch fish," Para­dath said.

He called on the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late the size and types of fish­ing nets used by lo­cal fish­er­men. An­oth­er fish­er­man Es­ook Ali called on the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties to teach Span­ish to the fish­er­men. He said if a con­sulate was es­tab­lished, fish­er­men will get pro­tec­tion.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion De­vant Ma­haraj said he was will­ing to en­gage in talks to set up a con­sulate. He said there were laws about pol­lu­tion and the size of fish­ing nets but he high­light­ed poor en­force­ment which he said was caused by the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion's fail­ure to fill va­can­cies.

He said once a pro­pos­al is made by the fish­er­men, he will ad­dress it. Am­bas­sador of Venezuela Maria Eu­ge­nia Mar­cano Casa­do was en­gaged in a meet­ing yes­ter­day but an of­fi­cial said she would in­ves­ti­gate and is­sue a com­ment at a lat­er time. An e-mail was al­so sent to the am­bas­sador.


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