Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says a barge has been se­cured to move car­go to To­ba­go as an in­ter­im mea­sure while re­pair work on the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny con­tin­ues.

Speak­ing at the post-Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil Me­dia Brief­ing yes­ter­day, Au­gus­tine said the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go has en­gaged a 67-me­tre barge for a ten-day pe­ri­od, start­ing to­mor­row, to trans­port car­go that can­not be car­ried on the pas­sen­ger ves­sels. The barge will move loads over 7,000 kilo­grammes, in­clud­ing dan­ger­ous car­go, live­stock and bulk items, us­ing an ap­point­ment-based book­ing sys­tem, and can ac­com­mo­date about 30 trucks at a time, he said.

Au­gus­tine con­firmed that fi­nal weld­ing works to re­pair hull dam­age on the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny be­gan on Wednes­day and are ex­pect­ed to take four full days. He said an­oth­er in­spec­tion will fol­low, with NID­CO pro­ject­ing the ves­sel’s re­turn to full ser­vice by Wednes­day next week.

Ad­dress­ing crit­i­cism over the dis­rup­tion, Au­gus­tine said the in­ci­dent could not have been pre­vent­ed.

“There is lit­er­al­ly noth­ing any­one in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly or in the Min­istry could have done to pre­vent what hap­pened from hap­pen­ing,” he said.

“I don’t know if, as Chief Sec­re­tary, I could stop strong winds or stop the sea from mis­be­hav­ing. Those are not pow­ers I have.”

He con­firmed there are long-term plans to up­grade and ex­pand the Port of Scar­bor­ough to im­prove safe­ty and ca­pac­i­ty but cau­tioned that even mod­ernised in­fra­struc­ture would not elim­i­nate all risks.

“Noth­ing hu­man be­ings build will ever be be­yond de­struc­tion. Cer­tain­ly, we can’t out­build and out­per­form na­ture it­self,” Au­gus­tine said, adding that cli­mate change in­creas­es the risk to coastal in­fra­struc­ture.

Op­po­si­tion MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les, speak­ing ear­li­er at a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment me­dia con­fer­ence, crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the seabridge, ac­cus­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and crit­ics of si­lence amid the cur­rent dis­rup­tion.

“There’s a break­down of the seabridge in this coun­try. Who’s swim­ming from To­ba­go to Trinidad now? Where is Far­ley? Where is my good friend Di­ane Hadad? Why is the deaf­en­ing si­lence?” Gon­za­les said.

He ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment has of­fered lit­tle be­yond re­as­sur­ance to To­bag­o­ni­ans af­fect­ed by the dis­rup­tion.

“What we are hear­ing now are just as­sur­ances—stand by, wait, have pa­tience. That is what Far­ley Au­gus­tine is telling the peo­ple,” Gon­za­les said.

Gon­za­les claimed the fall­out has al­ready had se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic con­se­quences.

“The con­struc­tion sec­tor has ground to a halt in To­ba­go. Life has come to a stand­still,” he said.

He al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide an up­date on a pre­vi­ous­ly is­sued re­quest for pro­pos­als for a new car­go fer­ry.