Renu­ka Singh

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty's (EMA) find­ings on the scores of dead mul­let washed up along the south-west­ern coast­line ear­ly this month led to more fi­nan­cial loss­es for al­ready cash-strapped fish­er­men.

Pres­i­dent of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) Gary Aboud said state-owned Petrotrin stopped the $1,200 com­pen­sa­tion to the boat own­ers on the same day the EMA re­port­ed that the mul­let did not die from oil con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Aboud once again chal­lenged the au­thor­i­ties to come clean on the re­al im­pact of the De­cem­ber 17 oil spill along the south-west­ern coast­line.

The Sun­day Guardian sent an e-mail to Petrotrin's cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Gillian Fri­day re­quest­ing con­fir­ma­tion and re­ceived an out-of-of­fice re­ply. Fri­day al­so said she would for­ward the e-mail to the com­pa­ny's pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, George Com­mis­siong, for a re­sponse. There was no re­sponse up to press time.But Aboud is de­fend­ing him­self amid claims that he staged the fish kill to get com­pen­sa­tion.

"Many cit­i­zens are self­ish and self-serv­ing. I will not re­spond to cor­rupt­ed, re­tard­ed and ig­no­rant peo­ple. God help them," he said.Aboud, who has al­ready been ar­rest­ed for his de­fi­ance of the po­lice dur­ing protests for the fish­er­men af­ter the spill, says he is will­ing to do it again. He said the fish­er­men will meet lat­er to­day and he will get his di­rec­tion from them."The Gov­ern­ment is hop­ing that we go away, but we are not go­ing any­where," he said.

The Sun­day Guardian learned that the Na­tion­al En­vi­ron­men­tal As­sess­ment Task Force (NEATF) ap­point­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to in­ves­ti­gate the cause and ef­fect of the De­cem­ber 17 oil spill along the south-west­ern coast­line is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by month end."That is just a plas­ter, a red her­ring, a dis­trac­tion," Aboud said.He said the im­por­tant stake­hold­ers were not rep­re­sent­ed on the task­force but the en­er­gy com­pa­ny was.

"There are in­suf­fi­cient sci­ence-based ex­perts on that com­mit­tee but the en­er­gy sec­tor is well rep­re­sent­ed. We ex­pect the en­er­gy com­pa­ny to in­ves­ti­gate the en­er­gy com­pa­ny?" he asked.

Task force al­most ready

Four months af­ter the group head­ed by EMA boss Dr Al­lan Bachan was ap­point­ed, their two-pronged in­ves­ti­ga­tion is near­ing com­ple­tion. The par­al­lel in­ves­ti­ga­tions fo­cused on the root cause of the mas­sive oil spill and whether the Na­tion­al Oil­spill Con­tin­gency Plan worked as it was sup­posed to.The task force will al­so rec­om­mend strate­gies to pre­vent a re­cur­rence of the spill, as well as an emer­gency im­ple­men­ta­tion plan in case an­oth­er oc­curs.

An­oth­er is­sue emerged last month when dead fish be­gan wash­ing up in the ar­eas af­fect­ed by the oil spill where the dis­per­sant Corex­it 9500 was used.Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Bachan said: "We are not go­ing to make an as­sess­ment based on in­com­plete da­ta."Word is that the EMA is await­ing a re­port from the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri) be­fore mak­ing a de­fin­i­tive pro­nounce­ment on what killed the fish.