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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Govt and Colombia working to secure T&T maritime borders

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20121116

A Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry team is col­lab­o­rat­ing with Colom­bia to un­der­take a site vis­it to view naval as­sets con­sis­tent with an es­tab­lished Re­quest For Pro­pos­als (RF­Ps), At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said yes­ter­day in Par­lia­ment.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to strength­en T&T's mar­itime wall, which in­volved es­tab­lish­ing strate­gi­cal­ly lo­cat­ed bases around the coun­try, manned by the Mul­ti Agency Mar­itime Task Force (coast guard, po­lice, reg­i­ment and cus­toms) of­fi­cers. He said the out­come of the Colom­bia vis­it would bet­ter po­si­tion the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­istry to forge ahead in the ac­qui­si­tion of ad­di­tion­al as­sets in sup­port of the mar­itime wall ini­tia­tive.

"The CCTV ini­tia­tive would en­sure that key ar­eas of the coun­try would be ful­ly cov­ered by year's end," Ram­lo­gan said. "By the end of the next year, the en­tire coun­try would be un­der CCTV sur­veil­lance. This mon­i­tor­ing and sur­veil­lance would be in­te­grat­ed with a re­sponse ca­pa­bil­i­ty from with­in all di­vi­sions, restor­ing a sense of hope and se­cu­ri­ty in the cit­i­zen­ry.

"There's al­so a plan to ob­tain scan­ners for our ports from the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NSOC) in its con­cept and lay­out would be equipped to co-or­di­nate and mon­i­tor op­er­a­tions in­volv­ing se­cu­ri­ty and de­fence ini­tia­tives."

AG wants Colom­bian boats

The AG said co-or­di­na­tion in­te­grat­ed with sup­port from the De­fence Force, po­lice and oth­er law-en­force­ment agen­cies would bring a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to en­sur­ing the bor­ders were se­cured, clos­ing ex­ist­ing gaps. "The es­ca­lat­ed vig­i­lance would con­tribute to the holis­tic ap­proach to se­cu­ri­ty and de­fence un­der this new plan," he said.

"Ves­sels would now be manned and pa­trol our bor­ders in a two to 12-mile ra­dius, work­ing in tan­dem with the in­ter­cep­tors, and less cost­ly but just as ef­fec­tive as 70-me­tre ves­sels which we in­tend to pur­chase to se­cure our east coast.

"Our new bor­der-pro­tec­tion naval op­er­a­tional plan will in­volve 12 Coast Guard in­stal­la­tions strate­gi­cal­ly placed around the is­land, with fast pa­trol in­ter­cep­tors as­signed specif­i­cal­ly to each in­stal­la­tion. This will en­sure T&T will now be prop­er­ly se­cured which could not have been done by one OPV sim­ply pa­trolling 100 miles off our east coast."

Ram­lo­gan al­so re­port­ed that the Scot­tish Evening Times had cor­rect­ed a re­port it pub­lished on Thurs­day about the set­tle­ment be­tween the T&T Gov­ern­ment and the UK?ship­builder BAE.

Quot­ing the cor­rec­tion by the Scot pa­per, Ram­lo­gan read: "The Evening Times yes­ter­day re­port­ed that ship­builder BAE Sys­tems had won a £130 mil­lion com­pen­sa­tion bat­tle with the T&T Gov­ern­ment af­ter the Caribbean re­pub­lic had can­celled an or­der for three off­shore pa­trol ves­sels. We pub­lished the ar­ti­cle af­ter a spokes­woman for the de­fence con­trac­tor claimed it was to re­ceive the cash pay­ment.

"How­ev­er, BAE has in fact agreed to com­pen­sate the re­pub­lic, which had can­celled the £150 mil­lion or­der, af­ter it claimed the de­liv­ery dates for all three ships were de­layed and the com­bat sys­tem on two of them had failed dur­ing sea tri­als. "BAE Sys­tems to­day de­clined to com­ment fur­ther on the re­sult of the ne­go­ti­a­tions oth­er than to con­firm a set­tle­ment had been reached with the T&T Gov­ern­ment. We are hap­py to clar­i­fy this here."

Ram­lo­gan said: "I com­mend the Evening Times for ex­er­cis­ing re­spon­si­ble and world-class jour­nal­ism in ac­knowl­edg­ing its er­ror. It is an ex­am­ple that the lo­cal me­dia would do well to em­u­late." He crit­i­cised all three lo­cal dai­ly news­pa­pers.

Ram­lo­gan was crit­i­cal of a re­port in the Sun­day Guardian of Oc­to­ber 28, say­ing, "This ar­ti­cle goes in­to ex­ten­sive de­tails of an al­leged Cab­i­net meet­ing, at­tribut­ing de­tailed state­ments to min­is­ters, there­by plac­ing doubt and mis­trust in the minds of the pub­lic in re­la­tion to the Gov­ern­ment's han­dling of this mat­ter." He de­nied a T&T?Guardian sto­ry that re­port­ed yes­ter­day that the Gov­ern­ment was plan­ning to buy an­oth­er boat from BAE.

"Now the Guardian is in­sin­u­at­ing the set­tle­ment was sim­ply a part of some shady and sin­is­ter cook-up be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and BAE in which BAE is mak­ing a deal in ex­change for a fu­ture deal of some sec­ond-hand boats," he said.

"Well, let me tell you that noth­ing can be fur­ther from the truth. There is no se­cret deal and no hid­den agen­da be­hind this set­tle­ment. The Gov­ern­ment in­sist­ed on its con­trac­tu­al rights, BAE en­gaged us in ar­bi­tra­tion and be­fore the award could be hand­ed down by court, BAE agreed that rather than wait for that de­ci­sion, they were pre­pared to pay us the sum of $1.382 bil­lion to set­tle this mat­ter."

Ram­lo­gan said the Gov­ern­ment was not buy­ing any boats from BAE,?or any sec­ond-hand boats.


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