Cab­i­net has ap­proved the sale of three sec­ond-hand wa­ter taxis.

The taxis, Mi­lan­cia, Olivia and Ka­tia will be put up for pub­lic auc­tion, fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions made by Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er at last Thurs­day's Cab­i­net meet­ing. The Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny will con­tract the ser­vices of an in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping bro­ker to sell the wa­ter taxis, which were in­tro­duced in­to ser­vice in 2008 as an in­ter­im so­lu­tion pend­ing the pro­cure­ment of four new fast fer­ries. The cost of these sec­ond-hand ves­sels was US $5.5 mil­lion. The sec­ond-hand ves­sels were with­drawn from ser­vice and kept at Ch­aguara­mas pend­ing sale.

Min­is­ter ex­plores new stops for wa­ter taxis

In 2007, Cab­i­net al­so agreed to the pur­chase of four fast fer­ries to ser­vice the Diego Mar­tin route, which were de­liv­ered to Trinidad in Sep­tem­ber 2010 and com­mis­sioned the fol­low­ing month. The new wa­ter taxis are ser­vic­ing Port-of-Spain to San Fer­nan­do. Warn­er is now ex­plor­ing new stops for Ch­agua­nas, Point Fortin and To­ba­go. In a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, Warn­er said he was push­ing to open up the new routes to en­sure a re­li­able ser­vice for com­muters. "With the wa­ter taxis stop­ping in Point Fortin and Ch­agua­nas, there would be less ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic on the roads," Warn­er stat­ed.