KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt 

With land recla­ma­tion at King’s Wharf, San Fer­nan­do, pro­gress­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly, shell­fish har­vesters are call­ing on the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) to ful­fil their promise to com­pen­sate them for their loss of earn­ings.

Shell­fish As­so­ci­a­tion mem­bers had pre­vi­ous­ly made their case to Ude­cott, which was deal­ing with com­pen­sa­tion for fish­er­men who had to re­move their boats from the wa­ter dur­ing the work to pump sand across 3.8 hectares of the wa­ter­front. The work is part of the an­tic­i­pat­ed San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Re­de­vel­op­ment Project.

While the as­so­ci­a­tion states that boat own­ers at King’s Wharf re­ceived com­pen­sa­tion, shell­fish har­vesters claim they have been suf­fer­ing for the past two months as the suc­tion dredger, Cos­ta La Luz, con­tin­ued trans­port­ing sand from the coast of Quinam to the Gulf of Paria, where a pipeline brought it ashore.

As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Asha Syl­van said the pipeline from the ship to the wa­ter­front had blocked their ac­cess to the Mara­bel­la man­groves for the past two months. In the man­groves, they har­vest oys­ters, conch and mus­sels. She re­called that in a meet­ing with Ude­cott and the Fish­eries Di­vi­sion at the San Fer­nan­do North Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, they were promised com­pen­sa­tion for their loss of earn­ings.

Syl­van said of­fi­cials asked them to sub­mit the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion, fish­er­men iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, and food badges, which would then be processed. They were promised a call two weeks be­fore the re­moval of the pipeline. How­ev­er, she said the pipeline has since been re­moved, and they are still wait­ing for com­pen­sa­tion. She claims Ude­cott and Fish­eries are stalling, cit­ing an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Syl­van not­ed there was no agree­ment on the com­pen­sa­tion amount—just names and num­bers tak­en. “They said they would call us two weeks be­fore the pipeline was picked up, and they would give us some­thing. The pipeline was picked up, and noth­ing has been giv­en. Any­time we call them, they keep telling us, ‘this week,’ ‘next week,’ there is an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. But what else do they need to in­ves­ti­gate?

“We al­ready sent in all our doc­u­ments. We are the ones feel­ing it be­cause we are out of a job. They have their work at the end of the day, but we have our fam­i­lies to care for,” Syl­van said.

She ex­plained that har­vesters use small­er ves­sels than fish­er­men to ac­cess the man­groves, so they trav­el clos­er to the shore when the tide is low. As such, nav­i­gat­ing around the pipeline would have been dan­ger­ous, as they risked cap­siz­ing. Har­vesters used to go to the man­groves in Aripero, she said, but that site has suf­fered from oil spills over the years, and flood­wa­ters some­times wash away the shell­fish at the Godineau Riv­er, South Oropouche. As a re­sult, they now trav­el to Mara­bel­la, a safer lo­ca­tion.

Oys­ter har­vesters al­so sell their catch and re­tail pre­pared shell­fish at var­i­ous lo­ca­tions across South Trinidad.

Syl­van said be­cause many of them have been out of work over the last month or so, they had hoped for com­pen­sa­tion. She said while she was un­able to catch and sell shell­fish, she had to take a job at a roti shop, but lack­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in roti-mak­ing, she had to leave. Fel­low har­vester Emil Syl­van ex­pressed frus­tra­tion at the sit­u­a­tion, say­ing it was not a good look to see so much progress made while har­vesters were left be­hind. He said it ap­peared the au­thor­i­ties were not tak­ing them se­ri­ous­ly.

“I have been sell­ing in Batchiya Vil­lage, Pe­nal, for over 20 years,” Emil said.

“Dur­ing that time, I had to look for con­struc­tion work to pro­vide for my fam­i­ly. But I wor­ry that by the time I re­turn, I will have al­ready lost my reg­u­lar cus­tomers.”

Emil called on Ude­cott to ad­dress the mat­ter.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Ude­cott on the mat­ter and is await­ing a re­sponse.