KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Blue Wave Har­mo­ny has been cleared to re­turn to in­ter-is­land ser­vice, the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT) con­firmed yes­ter­day.

The sec­ond-hand ves­sel has been deemed fit for sea af­ter in­ter­na­tion­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion sur­vey­ors in­spect­ed and cer­ti­fied all re­pair works, en­sur­ing it met all re­quired in­ter­na­tion­al safe­ty and reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards.

PATT not­ed that be­fore en­ter­ing full com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions, the ves­sel will con­duct fi­nal sea tri­als with car­go, in­clud­ing heavy goods, con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als, dan­ger­ous goods, and live­stock. The Blue Wave Har­mo­ny was sched­uled to de­part Port-of-Spain at 2 pm and Scar­bor­ough at 11 pm yes­ter­day.

Once ful­ly op­er­a­tional, PATT said, the ves­sel is ex­pect­ed to boost freight and pas­sen­ger ca­pac­i­ty on the seabridge, op­er­at­ing along­side the Buc­coo Reef, APT James, and the Galleons Pas­sage.

While Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Melanie Roberts-Radg­man wel­comed the news, she crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for what she de­scribed as its dis­mis­sive at­ti­tude to­ward To­bag­o­ni­ans dur­ing the ves­sel’s down­time. She al­so called out the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) for re­main­ing silent on the is­sue.

“We are strug­gling on the is­land, and we now have a chief sec­re­tary who, maybe for po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy, has been silent on the mat­ter,” Roberts-Radg­man said. “A ful­ly func­tion­ing in­ter-is­land sea bridge is an es­sen­tial ser­vice for To­ba­go—we can­not sur­vive with­out it.”

She added that key sec­tors in To­ba­go, in­clud­ing tourism, goods, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, and man­u­fac­tur­ing, had been se­vere­ly af­fect­ed dur­ing the dis­rup­tion.

“Shelves have been emp­tied, and even KFC out­lets have been with­out sand­wich­es be­cause goods were stuck in Trinidad,” she said.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John re­ject­ed claims that the in­ter-is­land seabridge had been crip­pled.

“The PNM Op­po­si­tion are de­lud­ed and des­per­ate, ap­pear­ing to mis­lead the pub­lic with mis­in­for­ma­tion,” John said. “At no time has the in­ter-is­land seabridge been crip­pled. All state agen­cies re­spon­si­ble for the sea bridge have been ful­ly en­gaged in man­ag­ing avail­able re­sources and en­sur­ing time­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the pub­lic. Sup­ply al­ways ex­ceed­ed de­mand.”