Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress of cre­at­ing “mis­chief” over Gov­ern­ment’s leas­ing of Mal­tese ves­sel Jean De La Valette to ease the seabridge fi­as­co.

Row­ley made the com­ment af­ter tour­ing the sec­ond phase of the Cu­mu­to to Man­zanil­la High­way and ex­am­in­ing con­struc­tion and dredg­ing works at Green­vale, La Hor­quet­ta, which was af­fect­ed by wide­spread flood­ing last Oc­to­ber. The PM toured both ar­eas for four hours in the com­pa­ny of Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon and the me­dia.

Dur­ing the tour, Sinanan was asked by Guardian Me­dia about the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Gov­ern­ment’s leas­ing arrange­ment of the 10-year-old ves­sel from Mal­tese com­pa­ny Vir­tu Hold­ings Ltd, whose man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Fran­cis Portel­li has been in­volved in a huge oil scan­dal in Mal­ta, with al­le­ga­tions of mon­ey laun­der­ing and bribery still hang­ing over his head. Portel­li is cur­rent­ly fac­ing charges of bribery in a case con­nect­ed to the 2013 En­e­mal­ta oil scan­dal, which is con­sid­ered one of Mal­ta’s most promi­nent cas­es.

In­for­ma­tion about Portel­li and the fact that the ves­sel crashed two years ago sur­faced via sev­er­al Mal­tese re­ports on Tues­day, af­ter the me­dia was pro­vid­ed with doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing the ten-page rec­om­men­da­tion made by NID­CO to lease the Jean De La Valette for one year.

Sinanan said he and NID­CO would put all is­sues raised about the ves­sel to rest at a 9.30 am press con­fer­ence to­day at his of­fice.

“I will give the pop­u­la­tion the as­sur­ance that any­thing this Gov­ern­ment do we do it with full trans­paren­cy and above board,” Sinanan said.

He said last Au­gust NID­CO had ad­ver­tised in the dai­ly news­pa­pers ten­ders for the boat. But he said peo­ple have “their own po­lit­i­cal agen­das” and were try­ing to make the Gov­ern­ment look bad.

The PM in­ter­ject­ed at this stage, say­ing that he was not about con­tro­ver­sy.

“I am about get­ting the peo­ple’s work done. And I have said what I have to say on that par­tic­u­lar is­sue of the fer­ry and its pro­cure­ment and ser­vice for To­ba­go.”

Row­ley said he was a bit dis­ap­point­ed by the me­dia who have been re­port­ing “every piece of mis­chief that some­body comes up with and trau­ma­tise the coun­try with it,” with­out pro­vid­ing facts.

He said he was as­tound­ed to see that a re­port in the me­dia of the pas­sen­ger ves­sel’s ar­rival in T&T at the end of May was “be­ing put across as a sur­prise to the coun­try which trig­gered cer­tain mis­chief mak­ers to ap­pear on the scene. And cer­tain mis­chief mak­ers ap­pear on the scene and say I was not con­sult­ed. What is go­ing on? Why are we trau­ma­tis­ing the coun­try with this?”

The PM said he had in­formed cit­i­zens of the mal­func­tion­ing T&T Ex­press and that the coun­try will get a re­place­ment boat to im­prove the ser­vice on the in­ter-is­land route.

The Galleons Pas­sage and T&T Spir­it are the on­ly two fer­ries cur­rent­ly ser­vic­ing the seabridge.

“You would have seen us say we’ve got re­spons­es...the val­u­a­tion tak­ing place ...at the end of the val­u­a­tion we would make an an­nounce­ment that the Cab­i­net has ap­proved the leas­ing of the ves­sel and all hell breaks loose.”

In the last four days, Row­ley said cer­tain peo­ple have been mak­ing state­ments with­out a “shred of ev­i­dence and try­ing to im­ply that there is wrong­do­ing on this Gov­ern­ment.”

“All I could say to the UNC, es­pe­cial­ly Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Wade Mark, if this coun­try has any prob­lem about cor­rup­tion, pro­cure­ment and oth­er dis­ad­van­tages the last two peo­ple who any­body would want to be speak­ing on their be­half is Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Wade Mark. And I say no more on that.”

On Tues­day in the Sen­ate, Sinanan said NID­CO was fi­nal­is­ing the con­tract for the fer­ry. He said NID­CO has the op­tion to re­new the ves­sel for an ad­di­tion­al six months if need­ed.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to Portel­li’s is­sue sur­fac­ing, UNC ac­tivist and for­mer min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj said the Gov­ern­ment has many ques­tions to an­swer about the ves­sel’s pro­cure­ment process.

The Jean De la Valette will re­place the limp­ing T&T Ex­press, which is up for sale, on the seabridge.