Two fishermen of Rosignol, West Bank Berbice who went out to sea around 6:30 am on Saturday are missing and relatives are praying for their safe return.
Owner of the boat, Mahendra Pertab, 29 known as ‘Rub’ and his brother-in-law, Kanhai Madramootoo, 41, left in a small boat fitted with a 40-hp engine.
After they failed to return, fishermen from the Rosignol Fisheries went in search of them on Sunday and yesterday but they came up empty-handed.
Officials from the fisheries department in Georgetown visited Berbice yesterday after hearing about the men and promised to get the coast guards to go out in search of them today.
Pertab’s wife, Debbie told Stabroek News that her husband and her brother, Madramootoo would normally return home around 3:30 pm “or 5 o’ clock the latest the same day…”
She and other relatives were worried all night but felt the men would have made it home by the next day. According to her, although “they would go out far at sea” they would not spend more than one day working.
She is not sure if they developed “engine problem or if the gas finished or if the water was too rough…”
She did not want to think the worse though and is hoping and praying that they would come home safely.
She said even if they may have drifted away and are stranded in the water they have no way of contacting anyone.
The woman is worried and has not eaten since and although she observed the holy month of Ramadan she was so distressed that she was unable to celebrate Eid on Sunday.
This is not the first time the men encountered difficulties in the water. Debbie recalled that one month ago they were missing after they developed an engine problem.
At that time they managed to anchor their boat and were in the water for two days. On the third day their seine became entangled with “drift seines” belonging to some other fishermen who rescued them.
Two weeks before that they ended up in the same problem but luckily “they were only left in the water for one night. By 10 o’clock some other fishermen rescued them.”
Debbie said after those two incidents she begged him not to go back at sea but he replaced the engines with a better one and told her he would not have that problem again.
