Sascha Wil­son

Ce­dros fish­er­folk are call­ing for swift com­pen­sa­tion as an oil spill along the south­west­ern penin­su­la of the is­land has af­fect­ed more than 100 fish­er­men and over 30 boats.

Oil de­posits be­gan wash­ing ashore on Wednes­day evening and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd quick­ly dis­patched teams to con­duct mop-up op­er­a­tions.

As the teams worked along the shore­line at Fuller­ton Beach and off­shore, sev­er­al oil-stained boats were seen on the sand, ropes black­ened with oil.

Guardian Me­dia was told that there have been more than six oil spills in Ce­dros for this year, and this was one of the worst.

Fish­er­man Lyn­don Gay said they no­ticed the oil on Wednes­day evening.

“Be­fore we leave (to go out to sea) we saw the oil spill com­ing in and we rope every­thing was messed up. All out­side there (point­ing out to the sea) have oil.”

An­oth­er fish­er­man, Randy Sook­lal, said every time there was an oil spill it af­fect­ed ma­rine life as well as their their liveli­hood.

He said, “When that hap­pen­ing, and they sink­ing the oil and thing out there, just now we can’t hold fish here. When you sink that oil and that go down be­low, re­al fish run­ning from that, that pol­lut­ing down be­low. It is on­ly look­ing like they do­ing some­thing good but it pol­lut­ing be­low. It will take two, three months for fish to come back again.”

Sook­lal wants the com­pa­ny to com­pen­sate all fish­er­men and boat own­ers.

A boat own­er who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty said fish­er­men would have to use “twice as much fu­el” to sail fur­ther dis­tances to fish. “Around this time of the year, we com­ing close to Christ­mas. This is the time ban­dits nor­mal­ly at­tack fish­er­men at sea, so we are more at risk so we ask­ing  Her­itage to deal with this is­sue as quick­ly as pos­si­ble and com­pen­sate the fish­er­men.”

Com­plain­ing that af­ter the last ma­jor oil spill fish­er­men had to wait six months for com­pen­sa­tion, he said they al­so have fam­i­lies to main­tain and fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments. “Right now, every­body is on lock­down, wait­ing to see what hap­pens with this.”

Siparia Deputy May­or Shankar Teelucks­ingh, who is al­so the coun­cil­lor for Ce­dros said Her­itage per­son­nel re­spond­ed af­ter the re­ports were made on Wednes­day night, but pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures must be im­ple­ment­ed.

Teelucks­ingh said, “Pre­ven­tion is the area that I am not see­ing the ac­tive in­ter­est from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and al­so Her­itage in terms of their in­stal­la­tion for pre­ven­tion and that is what we need to have. Re­mem­ber it is an age­ing in­fra­struc­ture we have out­side and we don’t wait for an event or a dis­as­ter to take place be­fore we see how we deal with this hy­dro­car­bon re­leas­ing in­to the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment that af­fects oth­er users.” 

In a press state­ment, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed said the source of the hy­dro­car­bon was not yet de­ter­mined.

Stat­ing that its In­ci­dent Man­age­ment Team was ini­ti­at­ed, the Com­pa­ny said a Her­itage Spill Re­sponse Team and three oil spill re­sponse con­trac­tors were dis­patched to con­duct clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties.

The com­pa­ny added that reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI), the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency (OS­HA), and ma­rine stake­hold­ers were no­ti­fied of the in­ci­dent.