Kevon Felmine

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Three weeks af­ter the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) an­nounced that the jet­ty at the new San Fer­nan­do Fish­ing Fa­cil­i­ty was avail­able for use, fish­er­men re­main locked out, un­able to earn a liv­ing. Clin­ton Lochan, vice pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Fish­ing Co­op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety, said site per­son­nel con­tin­ue to de­ny en­try, pre­vent­ing any ac­tiv­i­ty at the fa­cil­i­ty.

While the site re­mains a con­struc­tion zone, Lochan claimed that Ude­cott had hand­ed over the fa­cil­i­ty to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land, and Fish­eries (MALF) but not to the fish­er­men them­selves.

Un­der the ini­tial agree­ment, the fish­er­men were to re­sume op­er­a­tions us­ing the jet­ty and lo­cal fish­ing ar­eas af­ter a six-month hia­tus, though ac­cess to the boat re­pair zone was not in­clud­ed. Last month, MALF is­sued a pub­lic ad­vi­so­ry stat­ing that from 6 am on Jan­u­ary 16, the jet­ty would be par­tial­ly open for com­mer­cial fish­ing, with tem­po­rary park­ing avail­able. How­ev­er, Lochan ac­cused Ude­cott of rush­ing parts of the project to avoid fur­ther com­pen­sa­tion pay­ments, leav­ing the fish­er­men in lim­bo. He ar­gued that MALF should com­pen­sate them for the past three weeks, as they have been un­able to earn an in­come.

“Up to now, Fish­eries can­not give us an an­swer about what is go­ing on. We called yes­ter­day, we called last week, and all we hear is that meet­ings are tak­ing place. We filled out forms for lock­ers, and up to now, they can­not even as­sign us a lock­er num­ber,” Lochan stat­ed.

He al­so in­sist­ed that fish­er­men should not be charged to use the fa­cil­i­ty while it re­mains in­com­plete.

“We can­not go there right now,” he said.

The on­go­ing dis­pute stems from Ude­cott’s land recla­ma­tion ini­tia­tive at King’s Wharf, part of the broad­er San Fer­nan­do wa­ter­front re­de­vel­op­ment.

As part of the agree­ment, fish­er­men were com­pen­sat­ed for six months while they re­moved their boats from the wa­ter. When the com­pen­sa­tion pe­ri­od end­ed on Jan­u­ary 15, MALF in­formed them that they would be grant­ed par­tial ac­cess to re­sume their trade.

How­ev­er, when many fish­er­men, boat own­ers, and helpers ar­rived at the fa­cil­i­ty, they were turned away by site of­fi­cials, who main­tained that it was still an ac­tive con­struc­tion site. With funds run­ning low, they con­tin­ue to de­mand an­swers, but Lochan said no clar­i­ty has been pro­vid­ed.

In re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia’s en­quiries last month, Ude­cott stat­ed that the jet­ty had been avail­able for use on Jan­u­ary 16 and that the en­tire fa­cil­i­ty would be hand­ed over to MALF in Feb­ru­ary 2025. The agency un­der­scored that MALF, as the client, was ful­ly in­formed about the project’s progress and the site’s readi­ness for use.

Ac­cord­ing to Ude­cott, on­go­ing work should not in­ter­fere with the fish­er­men’s use of the jet­ty. Yet, con­fu­sion per­sists. Fish­er­man Robindranath Ba­boolal re­count­ed that MALF of­fi­cials, through the co­op­er­a­tive so­ci­ety, had asked him to bring his trawler to test one of the cranes.

How­ev­er, af­ter com­plet­ing the task, he sought per­mis­sion to an­chor his boat at the jet­ty and was in­formed that the fa­cil­i­ty was sup­posed to be open to them.

“Now po­lice are telling me I can­not ac­cess the fa­cil­i­ty and that I have to move my boat,” Ba­boolal said.

He added that this was his sec­ond en­counter with the Pre­di­al Lar­ce­ny Unit, as of­fi­cers had ques­tioned him a few nights ear­li­er about who had au­tho­rised his pres­ence there.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to MALF for com­ment and is await­ing a re­sponse.