Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Kerrie Symmonds wants Barbados to move to a stage where fishing boats are insured.
He made the suggestion in the House of Assembly on Tuesday while chastising Opposition Leader Ralph Thorne’s criticism of Government’s response to fisherfolk who lost their vessels or were otherwise negatively impacted by Hurricane Beryl.
The Senior Minister said parametric insurance, based on agreed terms that would trigger payouts to the owners of insured fishing vessels, was the way to go.
Speaking during debate on the Merchant Shipping Bill, 2024,
Symmonds said Thorne failed to offer solutions and did not point out that about 90 per cent of the fisherfolk impacted were uninsured.
“Now that is the serious problem and we have got to talk [about] solutions. It don’t make sense cursing the Government because the Government was not supposed to insure anybody’s fishing boat,” the Member of Parliament for St James Central asserted.
“Come here and say what you see as the solution. The [Democratic Labour Party] clearly has none, so we offer one, and we say that there is a form of insurance called parametric insurance . . . which varies from
the ordinary type of insurance where you will have the insurance representative come out to assess the damage that is done and then quantify the losses.”
He added: “If we use the simple tried and tested method of assisting people with the parametric insurance policy, then we know all we got to do is to decide on what the trigger is. Is it a Category 1 hurricane? Is it that it is rainfall or flooding up to a certain level? Is it that it is coastal surge up to a certain level?
“These are objective, scientific things that can be measured, but once you have met that, then the collective grouping, the fishing fleet as a whole, is exposed to one question. Was there loss? If the answer is yes, and in this case, it clearly was loss, then you trigger the payout.
“These are legitimate business people, but we have to get them to act like business people.”
Symmonds also said Thorne should have read Tuesday’s DAILY NATION for details on the US$54 million Barbados-Beryl Emergency Response And Recovery Project to be funded by the World Bank. (SC)
