Richard Lord

Pas­sen­gers who used the wa­ter taxis, HC Olivia, Melan­cia and Ka­tia, were at risk be­cause of the phys­i­cal and me­chan­i­cal con­di­tion of the three for­eign-used ves­sels. This was stat­ed by Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj dur­ing a me­dia vis­it to the ves­sels at Harts Cut, Ch­aguara­mas, yes­ter­day.

An eval­u­a­tion re­port, com­mis­sioned by the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, list­ed the many prob­lems af­fect­ing the ves­sels: The re­port stat­ed:

• Hull flex­ion has caused fail­ure of some ad­he­sive bonds, al­low­ing wa­ter in­tru­sion;

• air-con­di­tion­ing com­po­nents on up­per deck re­quire fre­quent main­te­nance to seal leaks at pen­e­tra­tions;

• the hy­draulic pow­er units that dri­ve the steer­ing and oth­er con­trol func­tions of the jets have proven to be frag­ile for var­i­ous rea­sons, in­clud­ing prob­a­ble poor main­te­nance by ear­li­er users;

• ow­ing to the de­mand on the main en­gine and dri­ve train in gen­er­al, each ves­sel's ex­haust sys­tems were con­tin­u­al­ly prob­lem­at­ic, with fre­quent leaks and de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of lag­ging in­su­la­tion. All these sys­tems will re­quire com­plete re­new­al;

• the en­gines are tak­ing in very hot air rather than the cool­er air that re­sults in eas­i­er op­er­a­tion of the ma­chines. En­gine de­te­ri­o­ra­tion was, there­fore, ex­ac­er­bat­ed; and

• the wa­ter­jets, which take in large quan­ti­ties of wa­ter and ex­pel it at high ve­loc­i­ty to achieve propul­sion, are in­clined to take in for­eign ob­jects which im­pede propul­sion and, of­ten, force the ves­sel off-lift. This re­quires a "back-flush­ing" ex­er­cise by the mas­ter and crew or, if that fails, divers have to be brought in.

Ma­haraj said the ves­sels were sold to an un­named buy­er in Guade­loupe.