To­bag­o­ni­ans can look for­ward to pay­ing as much as $45-$50 for a pound of fish for the East­er sea­son un­less the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) in­ter­venes with a fu­el sub­sidy.

This point was made by Cur­tis Dou­glas, Pres­i­dent of All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AT­FA) when he spoke with Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day.

Dou­glas said To­ba­go's fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty is plagued with a pletho­ra of prob­lems. He said the in­crease in fu­el prices has im­pact­ed dras­ti­cal­ly on fish prices. He said fish rose from $20 to $25 a pound to $30 and $35 a pound fol­low­ing the last in­crease in the price of fu­el.

He said AT­FA is ask­ing the THA for a 50 cent sub­sidy for every litre of fu­el. Dou­glas said his as­so­ci­a­tion was ask­ing the THA to do the sub­sidy through the AT­FA. "We would have sub­mit­ted our plan to show them how it's been done be­cause even though they think they know, they don't.

We are fish­er­men, we know what is need­ed so we are say­ing quite clear­ly, what we are ask­ing for is that THA would be able to sub­sidise some of these gas re­bates through AT­FA so we will know the au­then­tic men, peo­ple who are go­ing out (to fish) and we will be able to ad­dress that and have the checks and bal­ances ac­cord­ing to how it is be­ing used."

He said a 50 cent fu­el sub­sidy can see fish prices re­turn­ing to $20-$25 a pound. He said once this takes place mem­bers of AT­FA can then re­duce prices which he said would great­ly ben­e­fit con­sumers.

Dou­glas said a "ghost" oil rig has al­so sent up prices. He said the rig pass­ing in the north­ern and east­ern coast of To­ba­go has dam­aged sev­er­al Fish At­tract­ing De­vices (FAD). How­ev­er, when the rig dam­ages the FADs the thou­sands of dol­lars ex­pend­ed in fu­el goes down the drain.

Dou­glas said AT­FA had in­formed the THA about the prob­lem with the rigs and called sev­er­al oil ex­plo­ration com­pa­nies who claim to know noth­ing about the rig. He said, "We would have called var­i­ous oil com­pa­nies, we called Shell, we called BPTT, we called Wood­side and none of the wants to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for it be­cause none of them says it be­longs to them so we have a ghost rig in out wa­ters and no­body in T&T knows where it comes from, yet still it was park­ing up out there with our cut­away FADs and no­body, not even the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy can shed any light on it. I am re­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed."

Dou­glas said no fish­ing as­so­ci­a­tion was no­ti­fied of the move­ment of the rig that moved with a sense of ar­ro­gance through To­ba­go's wa­ters. "They are the big mon­ey peo­ple and no­body can't do them noth­ing in this coun­try." Dou­glas said fish­er­men are wait­ing pa­tient­ly for com­pen­sa­tion. Dou­glas said the in­dus­try em­ploys over 1000 -peo­ple in To­ba­go and di­rect­ly im­pacts over 5000 per­sons who de­pend of fish­ing for a liveli­hood.