Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo on Friday alleged that corrupt practices by authorities in Suriname have stalled its promised licensing of 150 local fishing vessels and said Guyana will be seeking CARICOM’s intervention to resolve the continued harassment of its fisherfolk that has been continuing as a result.
“We have to start playing hardball now,” Jagdeo told fishers in Region Six, where he was present for the start of the distribution of $150,000 one-off cash grants to them.
Jagdeo, who spoke to fishers at both Port Mourant and Skeldon, alleged that the minister is linked to several people controlling the fishing boat licenses and profiteering off of Guyanese fisherfolk, which has snared the agreement between the two governments to license 150 fishing boats here.
The agreement had been reached between President Irfaan Ali and his Surinamese counterpart Chandrikapersad Santokhi and was supposed to see licensing in place by January 1, 2022, but it has not materialised yet.
In expressing his frustration at the Suriname authorities who reneged on a written commitment to license the 150 Guyanese fishing boats, Jagdeo blamed corruption. He said there was “Massive, massive corruption in the allocation of these licences and a huge attempt to profiteer on the backs of Guyanese fishermen by many in authority in Suriname.”
He stressed, that he wished to speak clearly about the issue since they have been tiptoeing around it for a long time. “We’ve worked with them. They have given commitments. They gave a commitment to the Minister of Agricul-ture [Zulfikar Mustapha] in writing that we will get 150 licenses allocated to us,” he noted.
However, according to Jagdeo, they have since “reneged on that” and have “denied they did it although we have it in writing.”
Furthermore, Jagdeo stated boldly that they have since discovered that a “particular minister in Suriname is linked to many people who are controlling these licences and they are then renting the licences to Guyanese so when we then exposed that, because we gave the information about the people in Suriname who were profiteering, we had the intelligence and we gave it to the Surinamese authorities, they then became upset because the matter came out in the public domain.”
He said that although Suriname’s President had told President Irfaan Ali that they would “allow (fisherfolks) to land their catch in Guyana,” Suri-namese authorities are still continuing to harass Guy-ana’s fisher folks.
Jagdeo said Suriname’s Minister of Agriculture Rabindre Parmessar “seems to be more powerful than their President” as he has been “enforcing a different set of rules.”
Many fisherfolk gathered at both distribution locations yesterday to receive the grant also expressed their frustration to Stabroek News about the continued harassment. One fisherman said that they are now faced with additional expenses by having to leave their boats in Suriname and “catch a small boat to go and come over.”
Furthermore, the fisherman noted that they are forced to sell their catch in Suriname for “lil and nothing.”
Other fisherfolks related that sometimes their boats are being seized for small issues and are being sold, while others reported that the location where they are forced to leave their boats is far out and is causing damage to the vessels.
Some fishers also reported that they are being stopped and searched excessively while plying their trade.
Jagdeo yesterday while noting that Guyana’s “patience is being tested” said that it will be writing CARICOM on the issue.
He pointed out then that previously Trinidad and Tobago used to do the same thing to Guyana. “We can’t ship our agriculture products, we can’t get nothing into their markets, and then all the Trinidadian companies were coming here, investing here, now they are coming to invest in our oil and gas sector and we made it clear that you will treat our people with respect,” he said.
He added that a lot of Surinamese companies are working and making money in Guyana and are “treated fairly” while their government is harassing Guyana’s fisherfolks. “So there has to be a different tactic now, we have to move away from just talking to them because it goes nowhere,” he stressed.
Jagdeo’s comments comes just over a week after President Ali said that representatives from the two countries would be meeting to discuss the issue.
“I reached out to President Santokhi. There is active work going on right now, in relation to the boats that were kept on the Surinamese side. That matter is being resolved right now. We have agreed that a high-level meeting will take place within the next two weeks,” the president told reporters last week on the sidelines of the launch of the National Population and Housing Census.
Ali said Guyana looked forward to the meeting of the two country’s foreign ministers on a long-term solution.
The Guyana Government previously condemned the harassment being faced by local fishers at the hands of the Surinamese authorities.
In a strongly worded statement, Georgetown called on Paramaribo not to go back on its promise to issue 150 SK licences to Guyanese fishermen for Surinamese waters and to provide an update as it relates to the licences.
“The Government of Guyana condemns, in its strongest possible terms, the most recent harassment being meted out to our Guyanese fisherfolk by the Surinamese government, inclusive of its failure to grant licences to our fishermen in keeping with a commitment made to His Excellency, Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali, President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana on 26 November 2020, during a visit to Suriname,” the statement from the government said.
“In the absence of the issuance of these licences, our fisherfolk continue to face harassment at the hands of the Surinamese authorities, including fishing vessels that are stranded in Suriname and cannot return to Guyana for fear of losing their licences,” the statement added.
Back in August last year, President Ali at a joint press conference alongside Santokhi said “I’m pleased at the conclusion of discussions between the ministers of Agriculture, and we have found a way forward in relation to the granting of licences by Suriname to our fisherfolk and this would be in effect from January next year, and this is because that is the period that the licences are normally granted.”
The licensing of local fisherfolk was to be done in keeping with the established quota set out by the Surinamese. Under the agreement, Suriname had agreed to licence 150 fishing vessels.
