Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

One of the two Cape Class Coast Guard ves­sels which Gov­ern­ment pur­chased from Aus­tralia was sent to the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic for re­pairs and is now back in ser­vice.

This was con­firmed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day fol­low­ing ques­tions from UNC MP Rod­ney Charles.

Charles not­ed there were "re­ports that on­ly one in 11" of the large Coast Guard ma­rine as­sets is op­er­a­tional, and asked the PM to state the ur­gent steps be­ing tak­en to make CG ves­sels op­er­a­tional

Row­ley said he didn't know what "11 large ves­sels" Charles was re­fer­ring to but the ques­tion's premise was in­cor­rect. He added that as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil head, he's re­peat­ed­ly said he wasn't pre­pared to come in­to the pub­lic and out­line any vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of state se­cu­ri­ty and un­der­mine this. He said Charles' re­peat­ed state­ments "telling the world, es­pe­cial­ly peo­ple near­by, that T&T has porous bor­ders, is a pull fac­tor to T&T."

On Charles and UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal's fur­ther queries, Row­ley said Charles was try­ing to get him to say ves­sels were down and "I won't do dat!"

He said the pub­lic in­for­ma­tion re­quest­ed was very use­ful to crim­i­nals who'd like to pen­e­trate T&T's bor­ders and he didn't know on whose be­half the Op­po­si­tion was "act­ing."

Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment had just spent a lot of mon­ey to en­sure that Coast Guard 41 and 42 are op­er­a­tional to­day.

Pressed by Charles, he al­so con­firmed that one of the two Cape Class ves­sels bought by Gov­ern­ment from Aus­tralia had to be re­ferred and was sent to the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic for re­pairs, has been re­paired and re­turned to ser­vice.

Row­ley al­so re­ferred UNC's Rudy In­dars­ingh to Sec­tion 18.2 of the act gov­ern­ing the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, af­ter In­dars­ingh asked if all In­land Rev­enue (BIR) and Cus­toms em­ploy­ees will be em­ployed in the TTRA.

"It's clear that my col­league from Cou­va South would like me to as­sist him with his read­ing and pay­ing at­ten­tion in the House be­cause the an­swer to this ques­tion lies in the very act that he's as­sist­ed in pass­ing in this House," Row­ley added, re­it­er­at­ing the claus­es.