Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram is ad­dress­ing con­cerns raised by the San Fer­nan­do Fish­ing Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Ltd re­gard­ing leisure boats moor­ing at the jet­ty in the new San Fer­nan­do Fish­ing Cen­tre.

Ear­li­er this month, the group sent a let­ter to the min­istry re­quest­ing in­ter­ven­tion af­ter its mem­bers ob­served a “par­ty boat” oc­cu­py­ing one of the piers as­signed to trawl ves­sels. They al­so ex­pressed con­cern that the jet­ty was not de­signed to ac­com­mo­date large ves­sels, and that in­tox­i­cat­ed par­ty boat pa­trons could dis­rupt their op­er­a­tions and threat­en their liveli­hoods.

An ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber, Stephen Tay­lor, com­plained to the me­dia on Wednes­day that the sit­u­a­tion was un­fair to fish­er­men. “What we re­al­ly con­cerned about is that boat on our jet­ty. We fight very hard. I fight very hard to make here. I lost about six months’ work, no pay. We did not cater for this. When we were fight­ing to build this, that (boat) was nev­er here...This is San Fer­nan­do Fish­ing Port, this is no plea­sure boat or noth­ing so.”

Call­ing on the min­istry to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion, he said the fa­cil­i­ty was in­tend­ed for com­mer­cial use, not recre­ation.

In April, the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) of­fi­cial­ly hand­ed over the $35 mil­lion fa­cil­i­ty to the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry. How­ev­er, the fa­cil­i­ty is on­ly par­tial­ly open.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter Rati­ram re­spond­ed via What­sApp.

He said, “We are look­ing in­to this and will re­vert in due course.” No fur­ther re­sponse was re­ceived.