FFOS blames govt negligence for boating tragedy

Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) has blamed suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments for fail­ing to in­tro­duce leg­is­la­tion to im­prove mar­itime safe­ty, fol­low­ing Sun­day’s boat­ing col­li­sion off Ch­aguara­mas, which left five peo­ple miss­ing.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, FFOS cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Gary Aboud said the or­gan­i­sa­tion had spent 30 years call­ing for mod­ern fish­eries man­age­ment leg­is­la­tion to ad­dress ves­sel reg­is­tra­tion, cap­tain li­cens­ing, op­er­a­tor com­pe­ten­cy, speed re­stric­tions and en­force­ment.

“Thir­ty years of warn­ings. Thir­ty years of ex­cus­es. How many more fam­i­lies must suf­fer?” Aboud asked.

He said the im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty should be find­ing the five miss­ing peo­ple and called for every avail­able Coast Guard ves­sel, air­craft, trained res­cue per­son­nel and mar­itime re­source to be mo­bilised.

“The first 24 hours are crit­i­cal. Every minute counts. Where is the ur­gency? Where is the full force of our na­tion­al search and res­cue re­sponse?” he asked.

Aboud al­so called for an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to re­ports that a ju­ve­nile was op­er­at­ing a high-pow­ered ves­sel at dan­ger­ous speeds when it col­lid­ed with an­oth­er ves­sel, be­lieved to be a pirogue.

He ques­tioned the cir­cum­stances un­der which a child could op­er­ate such a ves­sel and whether ap­pro­pri­ate li­cens­ing, su­per­vi­sion and safe­ty re­quire­ments were in place.

“These ques­tions de­mand an im­me­di­ate, in­de­pen­dent and trans­par­ent in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” he said.

Aboud de­scribed the col­li­sion as the con­se­quence of what he called “decades of in­ex­cus­able gov­ern­ment neg­li­gence”.

He urged the Gov­ern­ment to pub­lish and lay the long-await­ed fish­eries man­age­ment leg­is­la­tion in Par­lia­ment, con­vene con­sul­ta­tions with fish­er­folk and mar­itime stake­hold­ers, and es­tab­lish firm dead­lines for re­form and en­force­ment.

“This is not a PNM is­sue. This is not a UNC is­sue. This is a hu­man life is­sue,” he said.

Aboud warned that peace­ful mass mo­bil­i­sa­tion and law­ful civ­il ac­tion could be­come nec­es­sary if the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s calls con­tin­ued to go unan­swered.

“Five lives re­main un­ac­count­ed for. Fam­i­lies await an­swers. Let us act be­fore hope turns to grief,” he said.