The Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NID­CO) says the date of ar­rival for the new fast fer­ry, HSC Jean de la Valette, is to­mor­row - Wednes­day 19th June, 2019, good weath­er per­mit­ting.

A state­ment from the or­gan­i­sa­tion says that up­on its ar­rival at the port in Port-of-Spain, the ves­sel will un­der­go rou­tine in­spec­tion and clear­ance by Cus­toms and Ex­cise.

The state­ment says that the process of ac­quir­ing rel­e­vant ap­provals and train­ing of lo­cal staff as re­quired for the ves­sel’s op­er­a­tion in the in­ter-is­land ser­vice be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go will sub­se­quent­ly com­mence.

The Jean De La Valette (JDLV) de­part­ed Spain en route to Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and To­ba­go last Fri­day lo­cal time.

The ves­sel is be­ing leased at a cost of 34,500 Eu­ros or TT$263,580 per day.

It was sourced from Mal­ta and was leased from Vir­tu Fer­ries, whose man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Fran­cis Por­tel­li of the par­ent com­pa­ny Vir­tu Hold­in­gs had been named in a huge oil scan­dal in Mal­ta, in­volv­ing al­le­ga­tions of mon­ey laun­der­ing and bribery.

Al­though the Op­po­si­tion claimed the pro­cure­ment of the ves­sel was ques­tion­able be­cause of the is­sues in­volv­ing Por­tel­li, NID­CO Chair­man Es­ther Farmer de­fend­ed the con­tract say­ing Por­tel­li’s court mat­ter was not rel­e­vant to the pro­cure­ment process. Farmer told the me­dia that NID­CO “deals with the le­gal­i­ty of some­thing, not the con­cept.”

A crew from Mal­ta will op­er­ate the ves­sel.