There can be no doubt that not hav­ing served for their ex­pect­ed use­ful life when pur­chased, the four dis­card­ed wa­ter taxis-what­ev­er the rea­sons for their be­ing non-func­tion­al-have been a mon­u­men­tal loss to the tax­pay­er and for which clear un­equiv­o­cal an­swers are re­quired. The ram­i­fi­ca­tions which have come to light in­di­cate mis­man­age­ment, pre­var­i­ca­tion and in­de­ci­sion on the part of those re­spon­si­ble. The net cost has been giv­en by gov­ern­ment min­is­ters as $126 mil­lion, that is, $133 mil­lion less than the $6 mil­lion scrap iron re­cov­ery val­ue, an amount which is be­ing con­test­ed. Judg­ing from in­for­ma­tion which has come to hand, this writer is clear that a sim­ple arith­meti­cal cal­cu­la­tion is in­suf­fi­cient in de­ter­min­ing the quan­tum of the "net loss" and that a more mean­ing­ful pic­ture will emerge on­ly by way of a cost/ben­e­fit analy­sis of the com­plete op­er­a­tion. He so rec­om­mends.

Giv­en that three of the four ves­sels had been in ser­vice for some time, how­ev­er short, pas­sen­gers us­ing them, whether or not they were aware of the me­chan­i­cal and oth­er de­fects with which the ves­sels are said to have been plagued, would have re­ceived a "ben­e­fit"-a ben­e­fit in terms of the com­fort which had been made avail­able, the ser­vice be­ing pro­vid­ed at fares which were (and still are) sub­sidised by the State. In these cir­cum­stances, it seems rea­son­able that the amount of the sub­sidy ought not to be in­clud­ed in any cal­cu­la­tion of the net loss to the tax­pay­er and that the amount of the ben­e­fit would there­fore be re­flect­ed in the to­tal amount of fares col­lect­ed over the time of use of the ves­sels. The net loss at the time of dis­pos­al would ap­pear, there­fore, to be $126 mil­lion less this amount of fares, de­pend­ing on what is be­ing put in­to the equa­tion. How­ev­er, bear­ing in mind the ser­vice had to be main­tained through the pur­chase of al­ter­nate ves­sels, the sit­u­a­tion be­comes even more in­tri­cate and one could spec­u­late as to what the out­turn would have been had the ves­sels not been laid up and non-func­tion­al for such a con­sid­er­able pe­ri­od of time and this, at avoid­able cost.

Er­rol OC Cu­pid

Trinci­ty, Tacarigua