Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has clar­i­fied that the re­cent funds sent to the All To­ba­go Fish­er Folk As­so­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent an­oth­er in­stall­ment of monies owed for work done dur­ing the Feb­ru­ary 7th oil spill cleanup. 

He said with the $1.1 mil­lion paid to AT­FA, an ad­di­tion­al $2 mil­lion was sent re­cent­ly and so THA now owes AT­FA $3 mil­lion for work done dur­ing the oil spill. 

This came af­ter AT­FA Pres­i­dent Dou­glas viewed the mon­ey re­ceived some­time last week as com­pen­sa­tion and not pay­ment. Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Au­gus­tine clar­i­fied that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is not re­spon­si­ble for com­pen­sa­tion, as this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty lies with the In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Spill Com­pen­sa­tion Com­mit­tee Fund.

He al­so sought to ad­dress con­fu­sion re­gard­ing his state­ments in De­cem­ber about the $2 mil­lion as­sis­tance for fish­er­men. He ex­plained that this as­sis­tance was nev­er in­tend­ed for the All To­ba­go Fish­er Folk As­so­ci­a­tion to dis­trib­ute.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it was not a form of com­pen­sa­tion. At that time he said the $2 mil­lion as­sis­tance would be made avail­able through the Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty. He clar­i­fied that it was specif­i­cal­ly for fish­er­men whose claims were as­sessed and were ap­proved by the To­ba­go Oil Spill Com­mit­tee last year.

This as­sis­tance is in­tend­ed to help them un­til they com­plete the process and re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion from the In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Spill Com­pen­sa­tion Com­mit­tee Fund.

Au­gus­tine said the IOSC asked the fish­er­folk to “ap­ply to them di­rect­ly at their Port of Spain branch,” and so he’s con­fused as to why the AT­FA would be­lieve the THA’s re­cent pay­ment for work done is trans­lat­ed in­to “com­pen­sa­tion” that was nev­er men­tioned or promised to them.

Au­gus­tine al­so re­vealed that a large per­cent­age of the claims sub­mit­ted were deemed il­log­i­cal, as they in­clud­ed fish­er­men who were not af­fect­ed and those with ex­ag­ger­at­ed claims. Of the $47.3 mil­lion in claims sub­mit­ted, on­ly $4.3 mil­lion were con­sid­ered jus­ti­fi­able.