Head of the new­ly-formed To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber Mar­tin George has con­demned the con­tin­ued chal­lenges be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced on the in­ter-is­land seabridge.

Com­ment­ing on the var­i­ous can­cel­la­tions due to me­chan­i­cal is­sues with the fer­ries, George de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as an abysmal fail­ure of the Gov­ern­ment, the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T board and NID­CO.

Loaded with pas­sen­gers en route to To­ba­go on Wednes­day, the Galleons Pas­sage had to re­turn to the Port-of-Spain port due to al­leged ad­verse weath­er con­di­tions. How­ev­er, checks with the Met Of­fice re­vealed that there were no rough seas or ad­verse weath­er ad­vi­sories at the time. Mere hours af­ter the in­ci­dent, George, the di­rec­tor/in­cor­po­ra­tor of the new­ly-formed busi­ness body, said the con­tin­u­ing seabridge fail­ures were un­ac­cept­able.

“The To­ba­go Busi­ness Cham­ber con­demns the con­tin­ued and col­lec­tive­ly abysmal fail­ure of the Gov­ern­ment, the board of the Port Au­thor­i­ty and NID­CO in their com­pre­hen­sive fail­ings and in­com­pe­ten­cies in mis­man­ag­ing the seabridge, which re­mains a life­line of ne­ces­si­ty for the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go and even more so for the av­er­age To­bag­on­ian,” George said.

“We re­spect­ful­ly call up­on the To­bag­o­ni­ans who head these en­ti­ties to do bet­ter for your fel­low To­bag­o­ni­ans and just stop with the ex­cus­es and get this fixed as a mat­ter of ur­gency. The peo­ple of To­ba­go de­serve bet­ter than this.”

Mean­while, THA Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Wat­son Duke again warned that the Galleons Pas­sage was in­ap­pro­pri­ate for the wa­ters be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go. In a stern video mes­sage, Duke said pas­sen­gers’ lives were be­ing en­dan­gered

“I have said al­ready, the Galleons Pas­sage is Gilli­gan’s Pas­sage and it’s no new boat, it is an old boat. I have said al­ready, the boat is a river­boat and not suit­ed for car­ry­ing per­sons on the high At­lantic Sea,” Duke said.

“I am say­ing here now and mark my words, that boat will kill some­one and when it does so, the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the PNM Gov­ern­ment will be held re­spon­si­ble. They are en­dan­ger­ing lives by putting peo­ple in that boat and I warn you to­day to please pull that boat out of ser­vice and buy a prop­er boat for the seabridge.”