Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will lead a team of min­is­ters to tour ar­eas af­fect­ed by the oil spill in To­ba­go to­day af­ter a ves­sel over­turned near the cove on Wednes­day morn­ing.

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced in a re­lease yes­ter­day morn­ing that Dr Row­ley will al­so host a press con­fer­ence on the mat­ter around noon at the Cen­tral Ad­min­is­tra­tive Ser­vices To­ba­go in Scar­bor­ough.

Mean­while, the spill has not been con­tained af­ter booms were set up around the leak­ing ves­sel yes­ter­day af­ter­noon by mem­bers of the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the T&T Coast Guard.

Con­tact­ed for an up­date, lead div­er Alvin Dou­glas told Guardian Me­dia that the spe­cial­ist divers from the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs have found it im­pos­si­ble to plug the spill. He said the team will now have to re-strate­gise.

He said, “The spill has not been con­tained. What is hap­pen­ing is, from the pro­fes­sion­al com­mer­cial divers’ point of view, the ves­sel is in a pe­cu­liar area. It can­not be en­tire­ly con­tained. The boat keeps bob­bing up and down. We did our best to con­tain as much as we can. With re­gard to plug­ging it, that may not be pos­si­ble.”

He said the boat must be re­moved as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, clean-up ef­forts have reached their peak as vol­un­teers were out as ear­ly as 6 am to as­sist with re­mov­ing oil de­posits from the shore­line and the road­ways. Part of the man­grove be­hind Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Gulf Re­sort has been blan­ket­ed in oil as the sub­stance set­tled be­tween the roots and low branch­es.

Fish­er­men from the Lam­beau and Ply­mouth ar­eas have been asked to ground their ves­sels to pre­vent dam­age. Pres­i­dent of the All-To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion Cur­tis Dou­glas said the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly has not act­ed as quick­ly as they should have to con­tain the spill. “So far, I have told a cou­ple of fish­er­men to ground their boats be­cause we don’t know what hap­pened. We know for a fact it’s an oil spill, and what the fish­er­men have been say­ing is that the oil has been go­ing up in their en­gine and clog­ging the pro­peller.”

For PNM Sen­a­tor Lau­rance His­lop, this sit­u­a­tion is heart­break­ing. “This is hurt­ing me as a To­bag­on­ian. I can see the sig­nif­i­cant dam­age that has tak­en place along the coast­line, and I know the fish­er­men are go­ing to be hurt­ing from this. We know there are ac­tiv­i­ties to get this un­der con­trol, so what­ev­er I have the abil­i­ty to do, I will do.”

Mean­while, the num­ber of vol­un­teers has in­creased with oth­er agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Hunters Search and Res­cue team in Trinidad re­cruit­ing ad­di­tion­al help.