The Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cou­va North is urg­ing the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to en­sure the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard (TTCG) is “prop­er­ly re­sourced”, so that it could deal with at­tacks on fish­er­men at sea.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued to­day, Ravi Rati­ram MP notes that two fish­er­men nar­row­ly es­caped with their lives on Sun­day night af­ter be­ing at­tacked at sea by pi­rates. 

The Op­po­si­tion MP is­sued a strong con­dem­na­tion of this lat­est act of pira­cy against fish­er­folk, ref­er­enc­ing a news ar­ti­cle which de­scribed the fish­er­men’s or­deal.

“…broth­ers Clin­ton and Den­nis Lochan… left King’s Wharf on Sun­day evening to ply their trade when around 8:20 pm, they were ac­cost­ed by pi­rates (uniden­ti­fied) who, af­ter forc­ing the fish­er­men off their fish­ing boat “Za­ck”, made away with the ves­sel. The broth­ers then swam for close to four (4) hours be­fore ar­riv­ing on shore at La Brea,” the MP not­ed in his re­lease.

The MP fur­ther re­counts how the broth­ers, who had been tak­en to the La Brea Po­lice Sta­tion, had their trau­ma fur­ther en­trenched, as the Woman Po­lice Con­sta­ble as­sist­ing them was un­able to ob­tain any as­sis­tance from the Coast Guard—the phone at the TTCG Ce­dros sta­tion was not work­ing, and no ves­sel was avail­able when con­tact was fi­nal­ly made with some­one at that sta­tion.

“The ar­ti­cle fur­ther states that af­ter re­ceiv­ing a tip off as to the lo­ca­tion of the stolen ves­sel, one of the broth­ers ap­proached Coast Guard Of­fi­cers at the San Fer­nan­do Yacht Club for as­sis­tance in re­triev­ing it, of­fer­ing to use an­oth­er boat, but was told by the Of­fi­cers that they could on­ly use a TTCG ves­sel.  How­ev­er, there wasn’t any Coast Guard ves­sel avail­able,” the MP stat­ed.

“Min­is­ter Hinds needs to im­me­di­ate­ly launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the events as re­port­ed, with a view to seek­ing an­swers as to why the TTCG was un­able to ren­der as­sis­tance to the fish­er­men,” MP Rati­ram. As­sert­ed.

“The lives of our fish­er­folk hang del­i­cate­ly in the bal­ance be­cause of the lev­el of risk that they con­tin­u­al­ly face, es­pe­cial­ly at sea,” he ar­gued. “The prop­er re­sourc­ing of the re­spec­tive Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Di­vi­sions such as the T&T Coast Guard and the TTPS Coastal and River­ine Unit have a crit­i­cal role to play in the safe­ty and well-be­ing of our fish­er­men.”