The All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AT­FA) has giv­en the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly 12 hours to en­ter in­to con­sul­ta­tion with them to dis­cuss the pay­ment of out­stand­ing monies owed to fish­er­folk for clean-up work done dur­ing the oil spill on To­ba­go’s South­ern coast in Feb­ru­ary.

AT­FA pres­i­dent Cur­tis Dou­glas de­liv­ered the ul­ti­ma­tum as he ac­cused THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine of be­hav­ing like a dic­ta­tor and seek­ing to im­pose a pay­ment plan on the as­so­ci­a­tion with­out any dis­cus­sion, dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at the Tur­tle Beach Fish­ing Fa­cil­i­ty.

Last week, Au­gus­tine said fish­er­folk were paid just over $1.1 mil­lion for the work they did dur­ing the oil spill and ad­mit­ted that $5 mil­lion was still out­stand­ing. He de­nied claims that no mon­ey at all was giv­en to the as­so­ci­a­tion.

But yes­ter­day, Dou­glas said the re­cent an­nounce­ment by the Chief Sec­re­tary on the pay­ment sound­ed like a threat. He said if the THA does not re­spond by to­day (De­cem­ber 24) to dis­cuss how fish­er­folk will be paid some more mon­ey, AT­FA would move to take le­gal ac­tion.  

He said fish­er­men are un­hap­py.

Al­though the Chief Sec­re­tary said a $2 mil­lion pay­ment is be­ing processed and the re­main­ing $3 mil­lion will be paid in 2025, Dou­glas said this was not done in con­sul­ta­tion with fish­er­men.

Dou­glas claimed $50 mil­lion was re­leased by the Min­istry of Fi­nance in Ju­ly this year to pay con­trac­tors who worked on the re­cov­ery ef­fort, but monies were not be­ing fair­ly dis­trib­uted.

Dou­glas ac­cused Au­gus­tine of favour­ing con­trac­tors from Trinidad and a few from To­ba­go.

“Far­ley is a cur­ry man, he giv­ing a cur­ry favour to the con­trac­tors in Trinidad and al­so to cer­tain con­trac­tors in To­ba­go be­cause cer­tain con­trac­tors in To­ba­go get paid in full, but they eh start the same time with we, but they get paid in full.

“Peo­ple who came in af­ter AT­FA get paid in full, but hear what, yuh (re­fer­ring to Au­gus­tine) go­ing on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion and say­ing great is AT­FA, great is AT­FA, AT­FA do­ing a great job in mit­i­gat­ing the oil spill to make it hap­pen and yet still you want to dic­tate to us be­cause yuh name Chavez.”

Mean­while, the as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent has called on Au­gus­tine and the THA not to pub­li­cise the amount of mon­ey to be paid to fish­er­folk any fur­ther, since it is putting their lives at risk.

Fish­er­man Jevon Bouch­er, of Gold­en Lane, who was one of the first re­spon­ders, claimed in March he was kid­napped by men.

“They think­ing like I have loads of mon­ey,” he said.

Bouch­er claimed he man­aged to es­cape from the trunk of the car he was snatched and bun­dled in­to. He said he was wor­ried about his safe­ty now that the pub­lic knows how much is owed to fish­er­men who took part in the clean-up ex­er­cise.