At an of­fi­cial han­dover cer­e­mo­ny held on yes­ter­day Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Fitzger­ald Hinds of­fi­cial­ly hand­ed over the new­ly con­struct­ed AUSTAL Main­te­nance Fa­cil­i­ty to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard.

The cer­e­mo­ny was held at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard’s Base in Hart’s Cut, Ch­aguara­mas.

In a state­ment the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty said the con­struc­tion of the Fa­cil­i­ty will bol­ster the op­er­a­tional ca­pac­i­ty of the TTCG, en­sur­ing the time­ly main­te­nance of the Coast Guard cap­i­tal as­sets, to fur­ther strength­en the bor­der se­cu­ri­ty of the coun­try.

Dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at the Cer­e­mo­ni­al Han­dover, Min­is­ter Hinds ac­knowl­edged the long­stand­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween AUSTAL and the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go which dates back to 2010.

Min­is­ter Hinds al­so ex­pressed his ap­pre­ci­a­tion and grat­i­tude on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go for AUSTAL’S com­mit­ment to the In Ser­vice Sup­port Agree­ment which was signed in April 2022 ev­i­dent through the con­struc­tion of the Main­te­nance Fa­cil­i­ty.

In 2021 the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go took de­liv­ery of two (2) AUSTAL Cape Class Pa­trol ves­sels to en­hance the bor­der pro­tec­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties of this coun­try, to work in con­junc­tion with the ex­ist­ing Coast Guard fleet.

Austal Lim­it­ed is an Aus­tralian-based glob­al ship build­ing com­pa­ny and de­fence prime con­trac­tor that spe­cial­izes in the de­sign, con­struc­tion and sup­port of de­fence and com­mer­cial ves­sels.