THE families of 29-year old Mahendra Ompertab, known as ‘Rubber’, and his brother-in-law Kanhai Madramootoo, 42, both of Lot 318 Rosignol Village, West Coast Berbice, the two fishermen who have been missing at sea for more than a month, have accepted that they will never see them again, and are moving on with their lives.

“It is unrealistic to keep hoping that they may still be alive. We still feel the pain, but life has to go on,” a female spokesperson for the families said yesterday.
The woman disclosed that the wives and children of the missing men have been helped by friends, relatives and well-wishers, and their offspring are attending school.
“We ensure that they don’t miss a day in school,” she said, denying that the missing duo may have been involved in illegal activities, also known as “runnings”.
The missing men have been members of the Rosignol Fishermen’s Co-op Society.
They had left their Rosignol base in a small white red and green boat fitted with a 40-horsepower engine to fish in the Atlantic Ocean off the Berbice Coast,  around 06:00 hrs last August 18.
They should have returned by 16:00 hrs the same day, but after they did not return, a group of fishermen from the area went out in several boats, searching as far as possible for them, but to no avail.
The next day, the search continued along the foreshore and banks of the river, in the event that the men might have been stranded, or their bodies would have washed up on land. The Coast Guard joined the search on Tuesday, August 21, some three days after the men went missing, but their search also was unsuccessful.
On August 28, fishermen in the Atlantic Ocean off the West Berbice Coast found a wooden tray and the fishing net from the men’s boat, but there was no trace of either the boat or the two veterans.
Ompertab is a father of three, while Madramootoo has one child.