Min­is­ter of Trans­port Stephen Cadiz took a par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing bull by the horns with his forth­right an­nounce­ment at Thurs­day's post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence that the Gov­ern­ment was mak­ing a se­ri­ous ef­fort to man­age prob­lems with the in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice.The War­rior Spir­it lost one of its en­gines on De­cem­ber 8, and ef­forts to re­pair the dam­age have since failed.The ves­sel is now tak­ing much longer to make the jour­ney be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Some sail­ings are tak­ing twice as long, run­ning to 12 hours, as the fer­ry limps along un­der the pow­er of its sin­gle re­main­ing en­gine.The War­rior Spir­it is re­spon­si­ble for both gen­er­al car­go and heavy car­go, the steel beams, grav­el, sand and oth­er heavy build­ing ma­te­ri­als that are the lifeblood of the is­land's de­vel­op­ment.Mr Cadiz was re­fresh­ing­ly forth­com­ing about both the prob­lems the fer­ry War­rior Spir­it is faced with, and the in­ter­im mea­sures that had been tak­en to man­age the short­fall in freight ca­pac­i­ty.

The con­tract gov­ern­ing the lease of the ves­sel is be­ing re­viewed to en­sure that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for its sat­is­fac­to­ry op­er­a­tion is cor­rect­ly as­signed and that the Gov­ern­ment gets val­ue for mon­ey spent.For now, the freight fer­ry is op­er­at­ing every oth­er day, not twice a day, but Mr Cadiz has made some sen­si­ble ef­forts to meet To­ba­go's need for this vi­tal ser­vice.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers