The All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AF­TA) in­tends to write to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Tues­day to deal with the prob­lem of fish­er­men from Bar­ba­dos who AF­TA claims are over­fish­ing in To­ba­go’s wa­ter. AF­TA pres­i­dent Cur­tis Dou­glas said “enough is enough.”

He said AF­TA would be send­ing let­ters to all con­cerned, since the “over­fish­ing by the Ba­jans are caus­ing fish proces­sors in To­ba­go to go out of busi­ness and the em­ploy­ees sent home.” Dou­glas said the Ba­jans have been “plagu­ing the To­bag­o­ni­ans for years.”

He said dur­ing the Covid-19 Pan­dem­ic the fish pop­u­la­tion in­creased. How­ev­er, he said for the last year, fleets of Ba­jan ves­sels have been op­er­at­ing in To­ba­go’s wa­ters il­le­gal­ly.

When asked he said the ves­sels can be iden­ti­fied as Ba­jan be­cause of the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion mark­ings on the boat. He said when the Fly­ing Fish is over­fished it cre­ates a greater prob­lem since many oth­er com­mer­cial species de­pend on the them for food.

He said this cre­ates a short­age of com­mer­cial species caus­ing high­er prices on the re­tail mar­ket. Dou­glas said in Feb­ru­ary 2022 he raised the is­sue with THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine “but it was not ad­dressed.”

On Sat­ur­day Nike­sha Pan­tin-Charles, the Sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture in the THA ad­vised Guardian Me­dia to con­tact As­sem­bly­man Nigel Taitt who she said has the port­fo­lio of Ma­rine Re­sources and Fish­eries. When con­tact­ed Taitt said he would not be able to com­ment un­til he has fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.