Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Wor­ried rel­a­tives of five Ce­dros fish­er­men, in­clud­ing a fa­ther and son, who have been miss­ing out at sea since Sat­ur­day, com­plained yes­ter­day that the au­thor­i­ties were not do­ing enough to find them.

“I am not see­ing no re­sponse so far from them (T&T Coast Guard) and that’s why I am lean­ing on God right now, not these peo­ple,” lament­ed Al­li­son Ram­per­sads­ingh.

She was among rel­a­tives gath­ered at Fuller­ton Beach in Ce­dros hop­ing to get pos­i­tive news about the fish­er­men’s where­abouts.

The fish­er­men, cap­tain David Seep­aul, 60, his son Da­vanan, 35, Shi­va “Saucy Boy” Seep­er­sad, 20, Braiy­er Gon­za­lez Ali, 21, and Je­re­mi­ah “Co­co” Pasqual, 19, left from Fuller­ton Beach aboard a fish­ing ves­sel named Aman­da af­ter 4 pm on Sat­ur­day.

They were ex­pect­ed back ei­ther Sat­ur­day night or ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing. When they failed to re­turn home, Ram­per­sads­ingh said they re­port­ed them miss­ing to the Ce­dros Po­lice Sta­tion, and the Coast Guard was no­ti­fied.

How­ev­er, an­oth­er rel­a­tive claimed they were told that the two Coast Guard ves­sels at the Ce­dros base were not work­ing.

Seep­aul’s son-in-law Mar­lon Sookoo said their dis­ap­pear­ance has been es­pe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult for the fam­i­ly, since they are still griev­ing for his (Sookoo) son Matthew, 14, who fell off a boat and died three years ago.

Sookoo was among the fish­er­folks search­ing for them. “On Mon­day, I took a boat and went search­ing for them or to see if any­thing was float­ing but didn’t find any­thing. This is very hard for me. Next month will be three years since I lost my son right out­side the jet­ty,” Sookoo said.

He said he searched in an area near Venezuela, where they some­times fish, but found noth­ing.

“We know they went to work and we were ex­pect­ing a call from the Guardia Na­cional in case they held them be­cause they were across by that side. We were ex­pect­ing to get a call but we didn’t get a call,” he said. He ad­mit­ted that his biggest fear was that they were at­tacked by pi­rates.

Ali’s aunt, Chamin Ali-Mo­hammed, who has Venezue­lan ties, said she reached out to her con­tacts in that coun­try, but they were al­so in the dark.

“They haven’t seen any­thing, no one,” she lament­ed. Re­main­ing pos­i­tive that she would see her son again, Seep­er­sad’s moth­er Par­ba­tee said she was light­ing deyas and pray­ing for safe­ty.

Lament­ing that her broth­er, Seep­aul, suf­fers from epilep­sy, Ram­per­sads­ingh said, “All we need right now is just help and sup­port from any­body we could get it from and we would re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate that.”

How­ev­er, Ram­per­sads­ingh com­plained that they have not re­ceived any re­sponse from the au­thor­i­ties.

“I am not see­ing any re­sponse so far from them and that is why per­son­al­ly I am lean­ing to God right now not these peo­ple, to God be­cause we not see­ing any­thing. We not get­ting any­thing from them re­al­ly,” she said. Deputy Siparia May­or and Ce­dros coun­cil­lor Shankar Teelucks­ingh said he con­tact­ed the Coast Guard and was told an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and search are on­go­ing, but he could not con­firm whether the ves­sels were work­ing.

“But based on his­to­ry, these are some of the is­sues that are com­ing out of the Coast Guard. Just a few months ago, we had a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence where fish­er­men were lost at sea and the fish­ing as­so­ci­a­tion had to take mat­ters in­to their hands to get the ves­sel drift­ing off the Sol­da­do Rock area.”

He said there were two in­ter­cep­tors at the Ce­dros Jet­ty, but ques­tioned whether they were equipped with radar equip­ment to search for the fish­er­men be­yond the bor­der points.

“Al­so, I do not know if the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs has is­sued a call to the Guardia Na­cional to have a search across in the Venezue­lan wa­ters. These are some of the ques­tions that re­main unan­swered,” he said.

Mean­while, a re­sponse from the T&T Coast Guard was not forth­com­ing last evening.