(Trinidad Express) They have been labelled the “devils” of the deep blue sea, but today local trawlers are willing to leave the business if the State agrees to buy them out.
Fuel costs and restrictions, a lack of berthing space and competition from trawlers from the eastern side of the world and from imported seafood have come to bear on the local industry, threatening to snuff it out, head of the Trinidad and Tobago Trawlers Association Shaffi Mohammed said last week.
Business is no longer profitable enough to make it worth their while and most local trawlers are ready to settle for adequate compensation.
“They did it with Caroni (1975) Ltd, they can do it with us,” Mohammed said last Thursday at a news conference at the Orange Valley Community Centre.
“We will find something else to do.”
Should a buyout come to pass, it will be for many the second time they are starting over, having been retrenched from Caroni (1975) Ltd.
“Fishing absorbed a lot of former Caroni workers,” Mohammed said.
“What we have to ensure is that there is a plan and that people do not find themselves living off their compensation until it finishes. Which many former workers of Caroni are facing today.”
Mohammed said the impression remained in the public that trawlers and fishermen made an obscene amount of money, but this was not so.
“There are vessels waiting for up to a month for fuel,” he said.
