Efforts are being made to help the Upper Corentyne fishermen in the piracy fight and Chairman of the Number 66 Fish Port Complex, Pravindrachandra Deodat has met Suriname’s Director of Fisheries, Rene Lieveld.
Lieveld who came for the meeting on Sunday following an invitation by Deodat, listened to the problems affecting fishermen and has agreed to implement the new systems put forward by the fisheries.
Deodat told Stabroek News that they discussed how fishing can be done in a more “sustainable manner to keep the industry alive.”
He said Lieveld has agreed to regulate the fishing the gear so that fishermen would only use the bigger seines to catch the bigger fish.
In this way, he said, “fishermen would not be allowed to catch the smaller fish [which they end up discarding in any case].”
Deodat told this newspaper that since the fishing licences are being issued by the fisheries department in Suriname, they have decided that that country would patrol the waters more frequently.
They also looked at how fishing can benefit both countries and agreed that “if we make 12 catch per year, six would be sold in Suriname and six in Guyana…”
Deodat said they recognized that “the two presidents [of Guyana and Suriname] have… a friendly relationship so we want the fishing industry to have the same relationship.”
He said too that the “fishermen are happy with the new arrangements that would be put in place. They thank Suriname for assisting them with licences and they hope that everything would work out as arranged.”
He pointed out that the “objective is to improve the fisherfolks because they are struggling with their livelihood.”
According to him, “we want to send a strong message to the pirates that this nonsense would not be tolerated and that they should find themselves a decent job and leave the poor fishermen to work to maintain their families.”
Deodat promised too that “as time goes by we would try to work in other areas [other fisheries, locally] to improve the general fishing sector.”
Meanwhile, within one week, pirates attached and robbed fishermen and caused them to lose millions of dollars when one boat was taken away and the other sunk.
The chairman related that both boats were recovered although they were badly damaged and would cost a lot of money to repair.
