Klao Bell, Staff Reporter
ILLEGAL connections and uncontrolled fires from the Greenwich Farm fishing beach in Kingston are said to be threatening the neighbouring Petrojam Oil Refinery.
The fishing village is also being blamed for last November's multimillion dollar fire at the facility and officials from the Ministry of Mining and Energy and the oil refinery are warning unsafe practices by the fishing folk could cause another catastrophe.
"We do find that they are a threat. They have illegal (electrical) connections over there that need to be dealt with...we have had several fires, in fact the investigations say the spark that caused the fire last November came from over there," said Winston Watson, managing director at Petrojam.
But, conceding that it was futile to ask the fishermen to relocate, Mr.Watson said he wanted the fishermen to co-operate with the refinery in coming up with a safe solution.
"We want to work out a safety agreement with them and are contemplating a number of options. We are thinking of making the wall higher... and since they cook with raw flames, maybe we need to buy them stoves or put up a fire alarm system. Right now nothing is set, but we have to work together to put an end to the safety hazard, we do acknowledge that they have been there a long time," Mr. Watson said.
One evening last November, a massive fire started at the refinery when a ship was off-loading thousands of barrels of oil. Three tanks which were damaged in the blaze have been repaired at a cost of approximately US$750,000. Initial theory on the cause of the fire was that it was started by static electricity, but one year later, fingers are being pointed at the fishing village.
But, fishermen are not accepting the blame.
"They always blame us, they have to say the fire is coming from somewhere so they say its here. Everytime Petrojam have some problem over there they shift the blame to us. Now they're talking about relocation because we using naked light over here," said Trevor Harrison, chairman of the Greenwich Farm Beach Fisher Folk Co-operative.
Mr. Harrison said relocation was out of the question.
"We are in favour of development not relocation. They have nowhere to relocate us to and they can't take us from town and send us to the country leave our family," Mr. Harrison said.
Conroy Watson, Senior Energy Director at the Ministry of Mining and Energy, said it was not safe for the fishermen to remain there and relocation is the ideal solution.
"The ideal solution is to have them relocated but they don't want that...they cook and do everything on the beach putting themselves at risk and putting the refinery at risk of another major fire," Mr. Watson said.
Mr. Watson also said that the Greenwich Farm fishermen have written to Minister of Mining and Energy, Bobby Pickersgill, stating that they are concerned that confrontation with Petrojam is imminent.
