…Ramjattan ties wiretapping claims to his move to Parliament for the names of the licensee
Former Public Security Minister, Khemraj Ramjattan strongly believes that the reports on wiretapping and allegations of illegality surfaced following his move to table four questions in the National Assembly earlier this month on the issuance of two trawler licenses by the Ministry of Agriculture.
According to Ramjattan, the Guyana Association of Trawler Owners and Seafood Processors (GATOSP) had approached him to acquire information from the Government, through the National Assembly, on the issuance of two trawler licenses.
GATOSP had expressed concern that licenses were being issued in breach of an agreement between the PPP/C Government and the Association pre-2015, which allowed for a reduction in active trawlers due to the issue of overfishing.
As shadow Agriculture Minister, Ramjattan said he set out to get the information. “But on the 11th December, I noticed a very nasty piece on the front page of the Kaieteur News, indicating that Ramjattan tongue untied, and stating that I am barefaced to query about fisheries trawler license when I never questioned about concessions for oil,” Ramjattan related.
Ramjattan said the newspaper increasingly launched attacks on him, and it was later he would find out that the trawler licenses issued were granted to associates of the Kaieteur Newspaper.
But Publisher of the Kaieteur Newspaper, Glen Lall, when contacted on Friday morning, refuted contentions made by Ramjattan. “No, no, impossible, I am not in the fishing business. I never was in the fishing business and I don’t intend to go into the fishing business,” Lall told Village Voice when asked whether he or anyone associated with him was granted a trawler license.
He, however, admitted that reports that the Member of Parliament was approaching Parliament to acquire information on the issuance of the license, had angered him.
“A foreign company in this country has almost 30 fishing licence, and he ain’t concern about that as a politician; he is concerned about a single Guyanese brother or sister getting a license, and that is what upset me,” Lall told this publication.
