A Corentyne fisherman says he lost another $3M when pirates attacked one of his boats on Wednesday in what was the fourth attack for the year.
Nakool ‘Fyah’ Manohar, of Number 43 Village, told Stabroek News yesterday that the six masked pirates, who were armed with two “long guns” as well as cutlasses, stripped his boat of 2,000 fish and other items.
The attack occurred around 5.30 pm on Wednesday. Manohar said the pirates beat his workers mercilessly and locked them in the fish pen, before breaking the engine and leaving them stranded. The men left for sea eight days ago and were expected to return yesterday.
Crew members from another fishing boat saw them drifting and went to their rescue.
Manohar received information about the attack around 4.30am on Thursday. After making a report to the police, he took an engine for the crew to return home.
He said the robbery occurred on the Corentyne River, close to the Suriname border. His captain told him that before locking him in the fish pen, the pirates ordered him to “drive the boat over to Suriname.” They then proceeded to remove all the items from the boat.
They claimed that the “big red, white and green boat” that was used to carry out the robbery was from the Corentyne. Another boat that was also said to be involved was waiting nearby during the attack.
According to him, one of the boats has since been held in Suriname but the local police have failed to cooperate.
He said the police are claiming that “they can’t do anything because it didn’t happen in Guyana but the pirates are from Guyana. They can arrest them and hand them over to the Suriname police.”
He is calling on the authorities to act quickly and come up with a solution to bring an end to piracy. The attacks, he said, has left him broken and he has had to borrow from the bank to reinvest.
Manohar recalled that following the last attack, police arrested some of the pirates but released them on station bail without instituting charges.
“I a big businessman—I buy and sell fish for exporting on the East Bank Demerara—and up to now they can’t give me firearm licenses,” he lamented.
However, Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan has said that some fisher folk are against a suggestion that they be licensed to carry guns to protect themselves against pirate attacks and have indicated that they would prefer mid-ocean patrols instead.
“I told them that it’s too expensive. The other [alternative] is to arm them and whenever anybody come to harm them they can take care of themselves but a lot of them seem reluctant to do that,” Ramjattan recently said.
