Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guae­di­an.co.tt

De­spite fish­er­folk re­ceiv­ing the all-clear from Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um to re­turn to sea fol­low­ing an oil spill last Wednes­day, ac­tiv­i­ty at the Fuller­ton Fish­ing Port in Ce­dros re­mained at a stand­still yes­ter­day. 

The spill had ground­ed over 30 boats and af­fect­ed more than 100 fish­er­men. 

Gath­ered at Fuller­ton Beach where sev­er­al oil-stained pirogues and ropes lined the shore­line, dis­grun­tled fish­er­folk told Guardian Me­dia that they had re­ject­ed the com­pa­ny’s com­pen­sa­tion pack­age.

De­scrib­ing the of­fer as un­fair and in­suf­fi­cient, boat own­er Vi­jay Ha­jarie com­plained that the State-owned com­pa­ny had of­fered them $12,000 per boat for four days, but they had asked for $15,000.

Com­plain­ing that they had been un­able to work be­cause their boats and ropes were stained with oil, Ha­jarie said the com­pa­ny had first of­fered them $2,000 per boat for four days, but af­ter they protest­ed, the of­fer in­creased to $3,000 per day.

How­ev­er, he said the amount was still in­suf­fi­cient.

“That is un­fair be­cause the con­trac­tor come here and take the same work­ers around here to do work on the beach to clean up the oil which they were get­ting $400 a day,  and I find we should get a bet­ter pay­ment,” he lament­ed.

Com­plain­ing that the com­pen­sa­tion was less than they earned, he said they need­ed sup­plies to clean their ves­sels and to get new ropes.

“Every day we stay home, who pay­ing us for that? We still ask­ing for this lit­tle $15,000 and they still don’t want to agree to this.”

He said they were al­so ask­ing for ad­di­tion­al com­pen­sa­tion for any oth­er day they did not work due to the on­go­ing mat­ter.

Moth­er of three Christi­na Ram­saran, wife of boat own­er Rakesh Ram­dass, com­plained that they have had no in­come for days, and have no choice but to bor­row mon­ey from loved ones.

“We does de­pend on this sea work for dai­ly mon­ey to send the chil­dren to school, for gro­ceries and any lit­tle sort of things, and since Wednes­day he not work­ing, no in­come. Chil­dren can’t go to school. No in­come in the house.”

Pres­i­dent of the Fuller­ton Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Paula Buck­mire said the fish­er­folk were con­sid­er­ing their le­gal op­tions. Call­ing on the com­pa­ny to set­tle the mat­ter ex­pe­di­tious­ly, she not­ed that they had to wait six months for com­pen­sa­tion when the pre­vi­ous oil spill oc­curred.

With no fish from the Fuller­ton port, fish ven­dor Kevin Mood­ie said he was al­so af­fect­ed. He ex­plained that Fuller­ton was his main source of fish, but he now had to go to oth­er ports and “com­pete with oth­er men to get fish.”

“They should try to com­pen­sate the fish­er­men be­cause the whole vil­lage is af­fect­ed by this, is a fish­ing vil­lage,” he said.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Her­itage said they con­tin­ued to li­aise with the fish­er­folk and were re­view­ing claims sub­mit­ted by those af­fect­ed.

With the fish­er­folk’s co­op­er­a­tion, the com­pa­ny stat­ed, they were pre­pared to ex­pe­di­tious­ly con­clude the com­pen­sa­tion process.

The com­pa­ny al­so stat­ed that the fish­er­folk were pro­vid­ed with clean­ing ma­te­ri­als and ropes and giv­en the all-clear last Fri­day to re­turn to the sea. The com­pa­ny was ex­pect­ed to com­plete the restora­tion of the im­pact­ed coast­line area yes­ter­day.