ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

Fish­er­men sub­con­tract­ed by the All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AF­TA) are grow­ing im­pa­tient as they wait for full pay­ment for their role in last Feb­ru­ary’s oil spill cleanup.

In De­cem­ber, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine re­port­ed that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly had paid AT­FA over $1.1 mil­lion to date, with an­oth­er $5 mil­lion still out­stand­ing. He said this pay­ment was be­ing processed and should be made soon.

How­ev­er, AF­TA pres­i­dent Cur­tis Dou­glas says this oblig­a­tion to­wards the fish­er­men is yet to be ful­filled.

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

With the one-year an­niver­sary of the oil spill dis­as­ter ap­proach­ing, fish­er­men hope the out­stand­ing funds are cleared soon, as many re­main in dire fi­nan­cial­ly straits.

The oil spill, caused by the over­turn­ing of the 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.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Chief Sec­re­tary Au­gus­tine for a com­ment but was un­suc­cess­ful in ob­tain­ing a re­sponse.