Shas­tri Boodan

Po­lice are ex­pect­ed to make a break­through when it comes to crimes af­fect­ing fish­er­men.

This as­sur­ance came from Nigel Taitt, As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary in the Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty, Nat­ur­al Re­sources and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment on the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), when he and oth­er of­fi­cials toured the new­ly ren­o­vat­ed fish­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Buc­coo on Fri­day.

For se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons, Taitt said he did not want to re­veal much about the in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

“Those who are in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, thief­ing of ves­sels and thief­ing of en­gines, please stop, a break­through will take place very soon,” he said.

“I do not want to com­ment very much on it. Let the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice do their job and I must com­mend the TTPS for a job well done thus far.”

Apart from rais­ing con­cerns about mi­nor in­fra­struc­tur­al prob­lems at the fish­ing fa­cil­i­ty, fish­er­men want­ed to know when they would be com­pen­sat­ed for the oil spill that took place off the south­ern coast of To­ba­go in Feb­ru­ary.

Smokey, a pop­u­lar To­ba­go fish­er­man, said he and oth­ers re­main in the dark.

“They are sup­posed to come out and tell us some­thing. They are not telling no­body noth­ing, so we are just hang­ing by a piece of thread,” he com­plained.

Smokey said fish­er­men lost in­come and equip­ment and are seek­ing a meet­ing with THA of­fi­cials.

On the is­sue of com­pen­sa­tion, THA As­sem­bly­man Son­ny Craig, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant/ Can­nan, said he is amazed that the MPs for To­ba­go East and To­ba­go West, Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy and Sham­fa Cud­joe, re­main silent on the is­sue.

“We know that monies have been passed around. Monies have been sent to the coun­try to deal with those is­sues. Un­for­tu­nate­ly be­cause of the sta­tus quo, those monies are sent through Trinidad and they nev­er meet To­ba­go,” he said.

“We can­not re­al­ly have a deep con­ver­sa­tion with all the stake­hold­ers in To­ba­go be­cause from that point the process is be­ing in­ter­fered with.”

Nick­o­cy Phillips, leader of the Uni­ty of the Peo­ple, a Buc­coo-based po­lit­i­cal par­ty, called on the MPs to ad­dress the com­pen­sa­tion mat­ter.

“We can­not con­tin­ue to force the hand and play po­lit­i­cal bat­tle with the THA and blame Far­ley (Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine) or blame the THA for re­spon­si­bil­i­ties that need to be shared with the To­ba­go West MP as well,” Phillips

The fa­cil­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to be opened on Fri­day and will ac­com­mo­date around two dozen fish­er­men from the area.