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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Fresh ferry for seabridge

by

Shaliza Hassanali
2292 days ago
20190331
The T&T Express docked at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

The T&T Express docked at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

Shastri Boodan

A leased pas­sen­ger ves­sel to re­place the limp­ing T&T Ex­press is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive here in May to ser­vice the in­ter-is­land seabridge.

Con­fir­ma­tion came on Fri­day from Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at his Port-of-Spain of­fice.

How­ev­er, chair of the In­ter-is­land Trans­porta­tion Com­mit­tee Di­ane Hadad said this was the first time she was hear­ing about a pas­sen­ger ves­sel ar­riv­ing next month.

Sinanan made the dis­clo­sure while speak­ing about the pro­posed To­co port, which, when built, will pro­vide a fast fer­ry ser­vice to To­ba­go to help ease the lin­ger­ing seabridge woes be­tween the is­lands.

“We could have a fer­ry ser­vice run­ning like in all the is­lands ...all the coun­tries...in Eu­rope...a fer­ry ser­vice run­ning every hour be­cause the cost of op­er­at­ing would be sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than it is now,” Sinanan said.

He said the mon­ey col­lect­ed from pas­sen­gers util­is­ing the cur­rent ser­vice was mi­nus­cule to the $150,000 the Gov­ern­ment ac­tu­al­ly pays for one sail­ing.

“Peo­ple don’t un­der­stand that. The boat may break down for one rea­son and you may have about 25 or 30 peo­ple on that boat. It’s $150,000 to run that boat up and down,” Sinanan said.

“You have to have the ser­vice. This ser­vice could al­low you to run small­er ves­sels too. Use the ex­ist­ing ves­sels and have them run­ning every hour at a sig­nif­i­cant­ly less cost.”

Asked if this would be the cure for the seabridge fi­as­co, Sinanan said a good fer­ry ser­vice in To­co would bring To­ba­go clos­er to Trinidad.

“What you would have is two ac­cess points...If you no­tice, you don’t hear noth­ing much about the seabridge again be­cause we told the pop­u­la­tion the ves­sels were in a bad shape and you can’t just go out­side and buy a ves­sel. There are no ves­sels avail­able.”

He said the US$17.4 mil­lion Galleons Pas­sage pur­chased last year has been de­liv­er­ing.

“Very soon we have an­oth­er ves­sel com­ing in by the end of May,” Sinanan said.

“So we would have three ves­sels op­er­at­ing. One will then come out and go in­to dry dock. Cab­i­net has al­ready ap­proved that. We are ex­pect­ing that that will hap­pen very soon.”

Asked by Guardian Me­dia if the ves­sel was leased and for how long, Sinanan said he made this an­nounce­ment at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing “a month ago. That is old news now.”

He re­fused to give more in­for­ma­tion on the new ves­sel and in­stead fo­cused on the fact that the seabridge was no longer fac­ing chal­lenges.

“When last you heard them com­plain­ing about the seabridge? There is no bac­cha­nal and prob­lem.”

Next year, he said two new ves­sels which were pur­chased from Aus­tralian ship­builders In­cat and Austal will ar­rive in T&T to ramp up the in­ter-is­land route.

Yes­ter­day, act­ing In­ter-Is­land Trans­porta­tion CEO Vil­ma Lewis-Cock­burn ex­pressed de­light at re­ceiv­ing an­oth­er boat to ser­vice pas­sen­gers. She de­scribed the ad­di­tion­al ves­sel as a “re­place­ment” for the 22-year-old T&T Ex­press, which was put up for sale last Ju­ly af­ter it was fraught with prob­lems. The new leased ves­sel, Lewis-Cock­burn said, will hold on un­til “the two new ves­sels come in.”

“Any­thing that of­fers more seats we are hap­py with,” she said.

She said the boat will be able to ac­com­mo­date “a lot of pas­sen­gers, much more than what we have on the Ex­press and the Spir­it. I think the pub­lic will be very hap­py with this new ves­sel.”

The T&T Spir­it sails six times a week while the Galleons Pas­sage make four trips. On week­ends, 700-plus pas­sen­gers are trans­port­ed to To­ba­go, while 2,000 pas­sen­gers utilise the ser­vice on week­days.

The Galleons Pas­sage and 17-year-old T&T Spir­it are the on­ly two pas­sen­ger ves­sels now op­er­at­ing the in­ter-is­land route. The Cabo Star has been trans­port­ing ve­hi­cles and car­go to the sis­ter isle.

Lewis-Cock­burn said the boat will be han­dled sole­ly by the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd and not the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T.

On pos­si­ble in­ter­est in the T&T Ex­press, which was pur­chased for US$20 mil­lion in 2006, Lewis-Cock­burn said, “Right now we have some ten­ders (for the Ex­press) that we are re­view­ing.”

Asked if she was aware of a ves­sel ar­riv­ing in May, Hadad an­swered in the neg­a­tive.

“We have no com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the min­is­ter or min­istry with re­gards to such. We have no such in­for­ma­tion about any boat. We are not aware of any­thing. The re­la­tion­ship has been aw­ful, not, non-ex­is­tence.”

How­ev­er, Hadad said it would be in­ter­est­ing to find out who leased the boat, at what price and for how long. She said the Gov­ern­ment has been dan­gling a car­rot in front of every­one, telling them “we go­ing to get a boat, we go­ing to get a plane and we go­ing to get a su­per­hero. The last three and a half years have passed and To­ba­go has gone straight down. Noth­ing would sur­prise me any­more.”

In­sist­ing she no longer had faith and con­fi­dence in the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, Hadad said the col­lapsed seabridge had caused busi­ness­es in To­ba­go to crash.

“There is noth­ing to have a prob­lem with the seabridge any­more. Peo­ple have giv­en up on sail­ing across there. The peo­ple who use the Galleons Pas­sage are those who are des­per­ate and they tell you that.”

Sev­er­al calls to NID­CO’s chair­man Her­bert George’s cell­phone went unan­swered yes­ter­day.


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