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Friday, February 28, 2025

Tobago fishermen still awaiting outstanding oil spill payments

by

ELIZABETH GONZALES
38 days ago
20250120
Volunteers assist with removing some of the debris from the oil spill at Petit Trou beach lambeau, Tobago and surrounding areas in February 2024

Volunteers assist with removing some of the debris from the oil spill at Petit Trou beach lambeau, Tobago and surrounding areas in February 2024

VINDRA GOPAUL-BOODAN

ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

Fish­er­men sub­con­tract­ed by the All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AF­TA) are grow­ing im­pa­tient as they wait for full pay­ment for their role in last Feb­ru­ary’s oil spill cleanup.

In De­cem­ber, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine re­port­ed that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly had paid AT­FA over $1.1 mil­lion to date, with an­oth­er $5 mil­lion still out­stand­ing. He said this pay­ment was be­ing processed and should be made soon.

How­ev­er, AF­TA pres­i­dent Cur­tis Dou­glas says this oblig­a­tion to­wards the fish­er­men is yet to be ful­filled.

“Mem­bers are say­ing, ‘Why don’t they have a dis­cus­sion with the pres­i­dent?’,” Dou­glas told Guardian Me­dia. “I don’t know ... I’m keep­ing my peo­ple calm … the 7th of Feb­ru­ary is com­ing up, so we are wait­ing.”

With the one-year an­niver­sary of the oil spill dis­as­ter ap­proach­ing, fish­er­men hope the out­stand­ing funds are cleared soon, as many re­main in dire fi­nan­cial­ly straits.

The oil spill, caused by the over­turn­ing of the Gulf­stream barge near Cove on Feb­ru­ary 7, 2024, wreaked hav­oc on ma­rine life and coastal ar­eas.

Cleanup ef­forts saw hun­dreds of vol­un­teers and fish­er­men work­ing tire­less­ly to re­store the coast­line.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine for a com­ment but was un­suc­cess­ful in ob­tain­ing a re­sponse.


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