Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Lam­beau fish­er­folk have ac­cused Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine of “breach of con­tract” as more than two years af­ter the dev­as­tat­ing Feb­ru­ary 7, 2024 oil spill, they are yet to be com­pen­sat­ed.

On Thurs­day, Au­gus­tine said any fur­ther com­pen­sa­tion will fall on the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), as the In­ter­na­tion­al Tanker Own­ers Pol­lu­tion Fed­er­a­tion (ITOPF) is not recog­nis­ing the claims by some fish­er­folk.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 kilo­me­tres of To­ba­go’s south­ern coast­line was stained by 50,000 bar­rels of oil af­ter the Gulf­stream ves­sel over­turned near Cove in To­ba­go.

Over 160 claims for com­pen­sa­tion were sub­mit­ted to the Oil Spill Re­lief Com­mit­tee, which was head­ed by To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art. Eighty per cent of sub­mis­sions were re­ject­ed due to ex­ag­ger­at­ed claims, un­ver­i­fi­able ev­i­dence and in­el­i­gi­bil­i­ty.

Au­gus­tine claimed those still seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion were “a hand­ful” of peo­ple who “are not nec­es­sar­i­ly fish­er­men or boat own­ers.”

He said, “The group with fish­er­men and boat own­ers all re­ceived their pay­ment through ITOPF. Those (seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion) are the peo­ple who work for boat own­ers and peo­ple with reg­is­tered craft. While the own­ers of the boat re­ceived com­pen­sa­tion, they did not, and ITOPF is not go­ing to give them any com­pen­sa­tion.”

He said the THA will have to make a spe­cial ef­fort to ren­der as­sis­tance for earn­ings lost be­cause of the oil spill.

But fish proces­sor Al­lis­ter McLetchie, rep­re­sent­ing a group of 16 fish­er­folk, has ac­cused Au­gus­tine of re­peat­ed­ly break­ing his promis­es.

“That de­ci­sion is what I call be­tray­al and a breach of con­tract,” he said.

“Fish­er­folk is not on­ly boat own­ers. Fish­er­folk is any­one deal­ing with re­sources from the sea. Whether you’re a ven­dor, a per­son sup­ply­ing the ice, or work­ing on the boat — you are a fish­er­folk.”

McLetchie said the THA’s pay­ment of a one-off grant to af­fect­ed fish­er­folk in May 2024 was ev­i­dence of the va­lid­i­ty of their claim.

“Ven­dors got the $1,000 food grant, every­one sur­round­ing the fish­ing in­dus­try got the $1,000 food grant, and that, to me, was our pre-qual­i­fi­ca­tion ap­prov­ing us to be com­pen­sat­ed.”

He not­ed re­cip­i­ents had to sub­mit doc­u­ments to prove they were a stake­hold­er and sign to re­ceive the grant.

“We have a con­tract with the THA, and that con­tract has been breached sev­er­al times.

“He gave us sev­er­al dead­lines. He stand up on a plat­form in Lam­beau and said he would have paid be­fore the year end­ed — that has been breached.

“He re­spond­ed to our press con­fer­ence and said he would pay us in two weeks — that is an­oth­er breach.”

McLetchie said he was hon­est in his claim that he was no longer an ac­tive fish­er­man, but had tran­si­tioned in­to his reg­is­tered fish pro­cess­ing busi­ness.

He re­called Au­gus­tine promised that all reg­is­tered busi­ness­es in the fish­ing in­dus­try would be com­pen­sat­ed.

“Up to this date, I have not seen a sin­gle cent for my fish busi­ness, Project 5.”

He not­ed Lam­beau was “ground ze­ro” dur­ing the oil spill, as fish­er­men and even res­i­dents had their lives up­root­ed.

“All now it af­fect­ing us. A lot of peo­ple who used to buy fish out of Lam­beau have stopped pur­chas­ing be­cause of the fear that fish is con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by oil. I loss a lot of cus­tomers be­cause they refuse to eat fish from a Lam­beau fish­er­man or ven­dor. That will stick with them for life.”