ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AT­FA) views a re­cent pay­ment of over $1 mil­lion from the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly as com­pen­sa­tion to fish­er­men and says fish­er­folk are still owed $5 mil­lion for work done in the oil spill re­cov­ery ef­forts.

How­ev­er, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is tak­ing is­sue with AT­FA’s claim say­ing it was ac­tu­al­ly $2 mil­lion paid last week. Au­gus­tine told Guardian Me­dia the claims be­ing made by the as­so­ci­a­tion were “not true”. He ex­plained the pay­ment was not com­pen­sa­tion but was for work done by the fish­er­men in clean­ing up last year’s dev­as­tat­ing oil spill.

In De­cem­ber, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine re­port­ed that the THA had paid AT­FA over $1.1 mil­lion, with an­oth­er $5 mil­lion still out­stand­ing. 

How­ev­er, while Dou­glas said $1.1 mil­lion was re­ceived last week from the THA, he said that was com­pen­sa­tion and not for work done.

Dou­glas said with the first an­niver­sary of the oil spill dis­as­ter ap­proach­ing, fish­er­men hope the out­stand­ing funds are paid soon as many re­main in dire fi­nan­cial straits.

“Mem­bers are say­ing, ‘Why don’t they have a dis­cus­sion with the pres­i­dent?’ I don’t know … I’m keep­ing my peo­ple calm … the 7th of Feb­ru­ary is com­ing up, so we are wait­ing.”

Dou­glas said he in­tends to dis­trib­ute the “com­pen­sa­tion” to all fish­er­men who made claims not on­ly those rec­om­mend­ed for pay­ment.

The oil spill, caused by the over­turned Gulf­stream barge near Cove on Feb­ru­ary 7, 2024, wreaked hav­oc on ma­rine life and coastal ar­eas.

Cleanup ef­forts saw hun­dreds of vol­un­teers and fish­er­men work­ing tire­less­ly to re­store the coast­line.

In De­cem­ber last year, Au­gus­tine said, “I want to be clear, AT­FA, I want to be clear, Mr Dou­glas, that the THA knows that it owes you and some oth­er ser­vice providers, and the THA re­mains com­mit­ted to pay­ing you. The THA is not say­ing that it will not pay you at all. And the monies that the THA have for you, AT­FA, are monies specif­i­cal­ly for work or ser­vice pro­vid­ed dur­ing the oil spill cleanup.

Yes­ter­day when con­tact­ed the Chief Sec­re­tary promised to re­lease the de­tails and the cheque num­ber to clear the air and dis­miss any mis­in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing last week’s pay­ment. 

He said the THA ex­ec­u­tive agreed to set aside $2 mil­lion through the Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty for as­sis­tance to fish­er­men af­fect­ed di­rect­ly by the oil spill.

These fish­er­men, he said, would have sub­mit­ted claims which were ap­proved by the To­ba­go Oil Spill com­mit­tee set up last year. He said the com­mit­tee was work­ing to com­plete the process for com­pen­sa­tion via the In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Spill Com­pen­sa­tion Fund. 

Au­gus­tine said with the re­cent $2 mil­lion paid out for work done dur­ing the oil spill, To­ba­go fish­er­folk are now owed $3 mil­lion.