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Monday, July 7, 2025

Rowley slams UNC scrutiny of ferry purchases

by

2368 days ago
20190112
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley during yesterday’s sitting of the House of Representatives.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley during yesterday’s sitting of the House of Representatives.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Over the last two weeks up to yes­ter­day, Gov­ern­ment paid ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$29 mil­lion to Aus­tralian ship-builders Austal and In­cat in down pay­ments and oth­er fees to­wards the pur­chase of the two pas­sen­ger fer­ries.

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley de­tailed the pay­ments yes­ter­day dur­ing a state­ment to Par­lia­ment on the ac­qui­si­tion of the fer­ries from Aus­tralian ship­builders, as well as two Cape Class pa­trol boats for T&T’s Coast Guard.

In re­sponse to re­cent Op­po­si­tion calls for Aus­tralian scruti­ny of the pro­cure­ment process for the ves­sels, Row­ley gave a full chrono­log­i­cal break­down of how the ac­qui­si­tion arose, start­ing with dis­cus­sions with Aus­tralian of­fi­cials in 2017 and 2018, his Aus­tralian vis­it that year, pub­lic up­dates, in­spec­tion of the pa­trol ves­sels by T&T naval ex­perts and this month’s pay­ments.

“The pro­cure­ment process used by Gov­ern­ment in the present cir­cum­stances can with­stand all scruti­ny and is un­taint­ed,” he de­clared.

The Austal fer­ry costs US$73.5m and the In­cat ves­sel US$72.9m. Row­ley said as at Jan­u­ary 7, Nid­co had paid Austal US$8,148,000, with US$7,148,000 be­ing the ten per cent down pay­ment for the fast fer­ry plus a US$1 mil­lion sched­uled ac­cel­er­a­tion pay­ment.

Like­wise, as at Jan­u­ary 7, Nid­co paid In­cat US$15,595,400 with US$14,595,400 be­ing the 20 per cent down pay­ment for the fast fer­ry plus a US$1 mil­lion book­ing fee.

“On­ly (yes­ter­day) a fur­ther sum of US$5,361,000 has been paid to Austal for the or­der­ing of the en­gines for the fast fer­ries,”
he said.

Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment is pur­su­ing fi­nanc­ing arrange­ments with Aus­tralia’s EF­IC ex­port cred­it agency for the ves­sels. He said there are fur­ther sums which will be­come due un­der the con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments go­ing for­ward un­til com­ple­tion of the ves­sels.

He said the ne­go­ti­a­tion team, head­ed by Nid­co chair­man Her­bert George, is work­ing on the is­sue. He al­so said dur­ing a June 24 to Ju­ly 1 vis­it to Aus­tralia, T&T De­fence Force head Rear Ad­mi­ral Hay­den Pritchard and En­gi­neer­ing Of­fi­cer Lieu­tenant Com­man­der Ra­jesh Boodoo as­sessed Austal’s Cape Class pa­trol boat to de­ter­mine its suit­abil­i­ty and found the ves­sel “would be quite ap­pro­pri­ate for the op­er­a­tion.”

The Austal fer­ry is a high-speed pas­sen­ger/car­go roll-on/roll-off cata­ma­ran with ca­pac­i­ty for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 930 pas­sen­gers, in­clu­sive of 132 VIP seats, 150 cars with ac­com­mo­da­tions for trucks and a pris­on­er hold­ing cell for up to ten per­sons. Ves­sel speed is 37.5 knots.

The In­cat fer­ry is a 100-me­tre high-speed pas­sen­ger/car­go roll-on/ roll-off cata­ma­ran with a ca­pac­i­ty for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,000 pas­sen­gers in­clu­sive of 224 VIP seats, 239 cars with ac­com­mo­da­tion for trucks and a pris­on­er hold­ing cell for up to ten per­sons. Ves­sel speed is 39.5 knots.

“As is ev­i­dent, at every step of the way, this Gov­ern­ment has been trans­par­ent in how it has con­duct­ed it­self. There have been sev­er­al lev­els of eval­u­a­tion and ne­go­ti­a­tions with In­cat and Austal. At every step, Gov­ern­ment has in­formed the pub­lic of its ac­tions and de­ci­sions, un­like what tran­spired be­tween 2010 and 2015. The then Gov­ern­ment didn’t in­form the pub­lic that it was procur­ing ves­sels for the Coast Guard from Damen. There was no trans­paren­cy,” Row­ley said.

“So to have the Op­po­si­tion ques­tion­ing the pro­cure­ment of the two or­dered fast fer­ries and the two Cape Class Pa­trol ves­sels from In­cat and Austal and to have them bring­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to dis­re­pute by writ­ing to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of Aus­tralia mak­ing com­plete­ly un­found­ed and spu­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions is quite dif­fi­cult to swal­low know­ing ful­ly well how they con­duct­ed them­selves be­fore!”

He con­demned Op­po­si­tion at­tempts to “sul­ly” this coun­try’s im­age and name, their in­vi­ta­tion to the Aus­tralian Op­po­si­tion to op­pose the mat­ter and the ap­proach to Aus­tralia’s At­tor­ney Gen­er­al “to em­broil the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go in a con­trived fab­ri­cat­ed scan­dal with­out a shred of in­for­ma­tion.”


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