Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Lands and Fish­eries said crim­i­nal el­e­ments are mak­ing life dif­fi­cult for le­git­i­mate fish­er­men.

He said gang­sters were mask­ing them­selves as fish­er­men and us­ing fish­ing fa­cil­i­ties to un­der­take their ne­far­i­ous acts.

Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat was at the time an­swer­ing ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day af­ter a lease let­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion ex­er­cise at the Min­istry’s Ch­agua­nas head of­fices.

He said, “I un­der­stand that bonafide fish­er-folk whether they op­er­at­ing at the fish­ing fa­cil­i­ties or on the seas there are gen­uine is­sues with na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and those mat­ters are to be ad­dressed by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. I, of course, work close­ly with the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.”

He said, “We have been ad­dress­ing this is­sue of be­ing able to track ves­sels. I say it’s a dou­ble edge sword be­cause some fish­er-folk and some peo­ple who pre­tend to be fish­er-folk are cre­at­ing prob­lems for them­selves. I use Blan­chisseuse for ex­am­ple, we have not been able to open that brand new fa­cil­i­ty, it’s op­po­site the po­lice sta­tion and we have peo­ple in the area who de­stroyed the elec­tri­cal fit­tings every time we want to have lights in the place be­cause they want to op­er­ate in dark­ness. As I go to fish­ery fa­cil­i­ties through­out T&T we have bonafide fish­er­men but we al­so have crim­i­nals op­er­at­ing out of those fa­cil­i­ties and they are cre­at­ing prob­lems. The po­lice and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty are aware of it they try to ad­dress it.”

Min­is­ter Ramb­harat said it was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the fish­er-folk to re­port any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty to the po­lice.

He said he wel­comes the ad­di­tion of Po­lice Ma­rine Branch, which the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice said will be­come op­er­a­tional in a few months.

He said the Coast Guard has its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and pa­trols the wa­ter from Puer­to Ri­co to T&T and the wa­ters be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

The Min­is­ter said the Ma­rine Branch would be lo­cat­ed in Care­nage where pa­trols can be done ef­fi­cient­ly.

Ramb­harat said he was al­so open to talks with the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty of Or­ange Val­ley that re­cent­ly suf­fered the loss of 7 fish­er­men af­ter be­ing at­tacked by lo­cal ban­dits.

Ramb­harat said con­cerns would have to be first brought up with the di­rec­tor of Fish­eries and the Fish­eries Of­fi­cers.

Mean­while, speak­ing at the lease dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny Ramb­harat said the gov­ern­ment was able to ease a sig­nif­i­cant bur­den from per­sons who have res­i­den­tial leas­es from the gov­ern­ment.

He ex­plained when the lease has to be re­newed a val­u­a­tion is done on the land and the hold­er of the lease would on­ly have to pay 30 per cent of the as­sessed val­ue of the prop­er­ty for a 30 year pe­ri­od. This, the Min­is­ter, said could amount to around $3,000 per an­num for a prop­er­ty val­ued at $300,000 in­stead of the full amount that arose through the val­u­a­tion.