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Anegada fishermen not happy about proposed protected areas
“He sends all sorts of people to hold meetings. We went to that meeting expecting to hear from him, directly not no representative, I really don’t feel that we are getting anywhere on this matter because what they are bringing to us we have major issues with that,” said one fisherman from the sister Island.
Another said, “People here want to meet with the minister, but the Minister (Hon Pickering) like he running. People were very disgruntled about the Minister himself, we want to know why he ain’t show up, this is under his portfolio and he ain’t showing up. They postponed it before and then this time when we went there expecting to see him, he ain’t show up, why is he running? That’s what we want to know, we are not happy with this whole thing.”
According to a Government Information Service (GIS) release, Deputy Secretary within the Ministry of Natural Resources and Labour Mr. Joseph Smith-Abbott said that recently held meeting was the final of four public meetings on protected areas and that the minutes, suggestions and outcomes will be sent to Cabinet and finalized through that office in due course.
But according to the fishermen the meeting did not yield much as on every instance there was no indication that their concerns raise would bear any fruit. One of the fishermen who has concerns about this issue said, “Government wants to make certain areas restricted in the sense that you can fish but you have to fish under certain license but what the Anegada people are saying is you want us to fish under license but yet you have no regulations as to controlling the outer people from coming in our water and fishing.”
Another interjected and said, “They don’t have nothing set up to police the water but yet they want to put we under license and they giving people overseas, fishing boats from St. Thomas license to come catch our fish here and go back to St. Thomas to sell it and we getting nothing.”
“This government is bent on doing what they want and their coming here is just formality they not coming to genuinely take our concerns into consideration. By law they have to hold four meetings so they would come and hold four meetings, if three people turn out they report that there was a big turnout, the meeting before this when the Minister came it was a big turnout yes but if they only reporting that they had a good turnout this time is nothing but pure lies, it was just a handful who came,” ranted another obviously frustrated fisherman.
None of the fishermen wanted their names mentioned for fear of persecution by the authorities.
As this news site understands it the five broad areas identified for protection in the Virgin Islands are; (1) the Western Salt Ponds/North Coast of Anegada; (2) the Pomato and Rufflin Points; (3) the Anegada Horseshoe Reef/ Anegada Channel Fisheries; (4) the Greater Baths and Taylors Bay of Virgin Gorda and (5) the Northern Cays and Eastern Jost Van Dyke area.
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10 Responses to “Anegada fishermen not happy about proposed protected areas”
You all will only realise your errors when it is too late. And your children will be the ones to pay... silly people.