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Sunday, February 16, 2025

Carli Bay fisherman still missing

by

1304 days ago
20210723
Relatives of missing fishermen Parasram Boodoo and Navindra Garib search the Gulf of Paria off Carli Bay, Couva, on Wednesday. Boodoo was later found dead at sea but Garib is still missing.

Relatives of missing fishermen Parasram Boodoo and Navindra Garib search the Gulf of Paria off Carli Bay, Couva, on Wednesday. Boodoo was later found dead at sea but Garib is still missing.

RISHI RAGOONATH

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Al­though au­thor­i­ties had pledged to work close­ly with the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties of Car­li Bay and Or­ange Val­ley fol­low­ing the trag­ic mur­ders of five mem­bers in 2019, fish­er­men said not much has hap­pened since.

As a re­sult, they said tragedies such as the death of Car­li Bay fish­er­man Paras­ram Boodoo and the dis­ap­pear­ance of his col­league Navin­dra Garib con­tin­ue. 

Pres­i­dent of the Car­li Bay Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Im­ti­az Khan said yes­ter­day that he has the doc­u­ments from plans in 2019 to make the fish­ing in­dus­try safer for mem­bers.

There were four crews on pirogues search­ing the Gulf of Paria for Garib yes­ter­day.

His fam­i­ly was at the bay hop­ing for some news but there was no suc­cess up to mid-af­ter­noon. Garib and Boodoo left Car­li Bay on Mon­day in search of a catch.

How­ev­er, they did not re­turn home and their pirogue was found ashore in Granville, Ce­dros. Po­lice al­so re­cov­ered the miss­ing boat en­gine.

At 4.45 pm on Wednes­day, Cou­va po­lice, led by Sgt Rawl­ins, went near the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, where they met of­fi­cers at­tached to the Coastal and River­ine Unit.

The ma­rine of­fi­cers re­port­ed that they had dis­cov­ered hu­man re­mains float­ing in the Gulf of Paria.

They re­trieved the body and sub­se­quent­ly brought it to shore, sus­pect­ing it to be Boodram’s body. Boodram’s fam­i­ly con­firmed the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, yes­ter­day.

Boodram and Garib’s in­ci­dent came near the an­niver­sary of an­oth­er painful in­ci­dent in the Car­li Bay com­mu­ni­ty. Some­time af­ter mid­night on Ju­ly 22, 2019, pi­rates at­tacked sev­er­al Car­li Bay and Or­ange Val­ley fish­ing pirogues in the Gulf.

They beat and threw the fish­er­men in­to the wa­ter be­fore steal­ing their en­gines and ves­sels. 

While some, for­tu­nate­ly, swam back to shore, five drowned and two oth­ers re­mained miss­ing. Po­lice charged a Sea Lots man with their mur­ders. They al­so charged two women and an­oth­er man with steal­ing two of the en­gines, which they re­cov­ered in Sea Lots hours af­ter the at­tack.

Po­lice were able to track the stolen en­gines be­cause they had GPS de­vices. 

Three weeks lat­er, po­lice and Coast Guard mem­bers met with the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty to dis­cuss how to make the trade safer.

Fish­er­men made sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions, in­clud­ing ac­cess to flare guns. They al­so asked that the gov­ern­ment pro­vide radar equip­ment to help cap­ture pi­rates and im­prove the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and re­sponse by the Coast Guard to dis­tress calls.

Re­spond­ing to the con­cerns, Lt Com­man­der Tori­no Tra­cy ad­vised that when fish­er­men are go­ing to sea, they should in­form the Coast Guard about the num­ber of ves­sels launched and their des­ti­na­tion so that se­cu­ri­ty ves­sels can pa­trol those ar­eas. 

Khan said the same team at the meet­ing was sup­posed to work with the fish­er­men to get their pro­pos­als to the gov­ern­ment. How­ev­er, they are still wait­ing.


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