Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Fish­er­men op­er­at­ing at the Port-of-Spain Whole­sale Fish Mar­ket are ques­tion­ing the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Nmde­v­co) over new lock­er fees.

In an in­ter­view at the de­pot, fish­er­man Je­lani Mitchell showed Guardian Me­dia a no­tice stat­ing that the lock­er room agree­ment be­gan on Ju­ly 1. Ten­ants who did not agree to the pay­ment were re­port­ed­ly giv­en un­til Sep­tem­ber 30 to va­cate the space.

Mitchell said the fees—$200 for a sin­gle lock­er and $300 for a dou­ble lock­er—are un­af­ford­able giv­en ris­ing op­er­a­tional costs, par­tic­u­lar­ly fu­el.

“With fu­el costs and oth­er ex­pens­es, we can­not af­ford to pay $200 or $300 for a lock­er,” he said.

He ques­tioned whether the fee is be­ing ap­plied across all Namde­v­co fa­cil­i­ties.

“When we called the as­so­ci­a­tions in oth­er dis­tricts and fish­ing ports, they said Namde­v­co didn’t im­pose a $200 or $300 lock­er fee on them,” Mitchell added.

Fish­er­men said man­age­ment had pre­vi­ous­ly waived the fee as a good­will ges­ture, ac­knowl­edg­ing the fi­nan­cial chal­lenges faced by those in the in­dus­try. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the fee ex­ists on pa­per, but many op­er­a­tors, in­clud­ing at Nor­ris De­onar­ine North­ern Whole­sale Mar­ket, South­ern Whole­sale Mar­ket, and Or­ange Val­ley Fish Mar­ket, do not pay it.

Mitchell ex­plained that lim­it­ed catch­es and soar­ing fu­el prices have com­pound­ed their dif­fi­cul­ties.

“Fu­el prices have risen from $220 for a 20-gal­lon drum to $700 now. We just can’t keep up,” he said.

The fish­er­men al­so high­light­ed in­fra­struc­ture is­sues at the de­pot that they be­lieve must be ad­dressed be­fore fees can be rea­son­ably col­lect­ed. They called for the fa­cil­i­ty to open ear­li­er, at 2 am, to al­low ven­dors to col­lect fish and reach their stalls across the coun­try.

Con­cerns were raised about the auc­tion room and jet­ty, in­clud­ing in­suf­fi­cient light­ing and the need for dredg­ing.

“We need to come here ear­ly. The boats come in ear­ly, and half the lights on the jet­ty don’t work,” said Mitchell.

“The last time they dredged around the jet­ty, Mr Pan­day was in pow­er,” he added.

Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land, SC, con­firmed that the fee had been waived to fi­nan­cial­ly as­sist fish­er­men in his con­stituen­cy and promised to en­gage Namde­v­co.

“They just couldn’t af­ford it at this time be­cause of the price of fu­el, net­ting, and bait. The ad­di­tion­al cost would have been passed on to con­sumers,” Scot­land said.

Mitchell not­ed that the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion had planned up­grades to the de­pot, which Scot­land con­firmed are still in progress.

At­tempts to reach Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Ravi Rati­ram were un­suc­cess­ful, while Min­is­ter in the Min­istry Sad­dam Hosien said he would look in­to the fish­er­men’s con­cerns.