Local authorities have taken bunker samples of all ships in the Port of Spain harbour on Trinidad’s northwest coast to try and track down the culprit behind a huge oil spill on Tuesday.
The local Institute of Marine Affairs (IMA) is now going through the samples to find out the guilty party. The government vowed yesterday that the company behind the spill would be held responsible for all clean-up costs.
Nevertheless, the government has faced flack for its perceived weak regulatory environment for ships calling at the Caribbean nation.
“Because our laws are poorly regulated and enforced it is much cheaper to dump waste oil rather than to treat and dispose of it properly. Regularly there are deliberate discharges of oil into our marine waters, (often at our ports) and even though the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) is called upon to investigate these disasters, the culprits are never held accountable,” local environmental NGO Fishermen and Friends of the Sea stated in a release yesterday.
1:30pm pic.twitter.com/F7woLm5OjA
— Ramxntu 🐉 (@RLoorkhoor) March 12, 2019
