Fish­er­men from the All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AT­FA) are threat­en­ing to pres­sure Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine out of of­fice if pay­ments for work done dur­ing the oil spill aren’t cleared.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence on Mon­day, AT­FA’s pres­i­dent Cur­tis Dou­glas warned that if the THA doesn’t make pay­ments to fish­er­men with­in six months, Au­gus­tine will have to re­sign.

He said, “We don’t send co­coa in fowl par­ty, and we don’t want no pussy­cat to rep­re­sent us. We want a li­on.”

Au­gus­tine, in a press con­fer­ence in Jan­u­ary, said the is­sue of com­pen­sa­tion doesn’t lie with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly but sole­ly rests in the hands of the In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Spill Com­pen­sa­tion Fund. The Chief Sec­re­tary had al­so said that de­spite this the THA will still make $2 mil­lion avail­able to as­sist on­ly af­fect­ed fish­er­men, with vi­able claims, this month.

These fish­er­men would have sub­mit­ted claims, that were ap­proved by the To­ba­go Oil Spill Com­mit­tee set up last year and are work­ing to com­plete the process for com­pen­sa­tion via the In­ter­na­tion­al Oil Spill Com­pen­sa­tion Com­mit­tee.

The com­mit­tee, in its re­port, not­ed there were fish­er­men with ir­ra­tional claims and oth­ers in un­af­fect­ed ar­eas claim­ing for loss of in­come.

The claims by the fish­er­men across the is­land to­talled $47.3 mil­lion. Of all the claims the To­ba­go com­mit­tee said on­ly $4.3 mil­lion should be con­sid­ered.

Dou­glas said this was un­ac­cept­able.

Last year the In­ter­na­tion­al Tankers Own­ers Pol­lu­tion Fed­er­a­tion Ltd (ITOPF) sent rec­om­men­da­tions to the THA re­gard­ing com­pen­sa­tion.

Au­gus­tine, in a let­ter sent by ITOPF, read that of the $47.3 mil­lion in claims sub­mit­ted, on­ly $4.3 mil­lion was deemed log­i­cal. He said that the or­gan­i­sa­tion warned there is no guar­an­tee that the THA would be re­paid if it pro­ceeds with the com­pen­sa­tion pay­out.

But, Dou­glas de­mand­ed that the THA take charge of the com­pen­sa­tion process. He said, “The ho­n­ourable Chief Sec­re­tary came and said to the fish­er­folk he is go­ing to fix them and bring them back to the right state but a year in­to it he then comes now and quot­ing ITOPF, which is an out­side agency. He's play­ing pol­i­tics, say­ing fish­er­men ly­ing, and they have to go to ITOPF.

He ac­cused Au­gus­tine of fail­ing to up­hold com­mit­ments to the af­fect­ed fish­er­folk.

“If Mr Au­gus­tine can­not stick to his word… take the fish­er­men’s ad­vice and call an elec­tion or demit of­fice, be­cause you’re not a man to your word.”

Au­gus­tine said AT­FA re­ceived $3 mil­lion to pay those who worked and it owed $3 mil­lion out­stand­ing. How­ev­er, Dou­glas claimed on­ly two mil­lion had been sent.

Au­gus­tine could not be reached for com­ment.