Gail Alexan­der

On­ward to T&T im­me­di­ate­ly - mi­nus up­grades in Cu­ba.

That’s the next chap­ter of the Galleons Pas­sage’s jour­ney af­ter act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Colm yes­ter­day re­vealed that en­hance­ment work con­tract­ed by the fer­ry’s sell­er couldn’t be done in Cu­ba as planned and the ves­sel is in­stead now com­ing straight to T&T.

The en­hance­ment work will be done in T&T on a phased ba­sis while the ves­sel does the To­ba­go fer­ry run “very soon.”

Im­bert con­firmed de­vel­op­ments in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day while re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion queries on the sta­tus of retro­fitting work on the ves­sel in Cu­ba.

The ves­sel, which left Chi­na in Feb­ru­ary, had been ex­pect­ed in April, May - then “soon”- as it en­coun­tered de­lays along the way due to weath­er, US in­spec­tions and oth­er is­sues.

The en­hance­ment work in Cu­ba was to have been the last as­pect be­fore its fi­nal port of call here in T&T.

In ex­plain­ing the lat­est changes yes­ter­day, Im­bert said arrange­ments for en­hance­ment work had two com­po­nents - cer­tain up­grade works to be done by the sell­er, plus up­grades to be done by the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NID­CO) on be­half of Gov­ern­ment.

“The sell­er had work to be done at his ex­pense with his own arrange­ment on a con­tract­ed ba­sis with the Cuban ship­yard and Nid­co al­so had work to do on a con­tract­ed ba­sis in a sep­a­rate trans­ac­tion with the Cuban ship­yard,” Im­bert said.

“We’ve been in­formed re­cent­ly that some of the ma­te­ri­als and equip­ment that the sell­er re­quires to com­plete the en­hance­ment work agreed to in the con­tract for sale of the ves­sel to Nid­co; some of the ma­te­ri­als and equip­ment, the sell­er is hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty trans­port­ing them from Aus­tralia to Cu­ba.”

He added: “Cu­ba is still an em­bar­goed coun­try for many coun­tries. Cu­ba ac­cepts ship­ments from some Eu­ro­pean states and doesn’t ap­par­ent­ly, make it very easy for ship­ments from coun­tries like Aus­tralia.

“The sell­er told us re­cent­ly that al­though fab­ri­ca­tion of one of the canopies had be­gun, they were hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting an air­line or ship­ping com­pa­ny to trans­port some of the re­main­ing equip­ment and ma­te­ri­als in­to Cu­ba.

“So Gov­ern­ment has tak­en a de­ci­sion to bring the ves­sel to T&T im­me­di­ate­ly and the work will be done in T&T, the boat will be put in­to ser­vice very soon and the en­hance­ment work will be done on phased ba­sis while the boat is trans­port­ing pas­sen­gers to and from To­ba­go.”

Based on re­ports, he said some retro­fitting work had been done in Cu­ba, but in­sist­ed the is­sue in­volved wasn’t a con­trac­tu­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of Gov­ern­ment. “The sell­er, as part of the con­tract for pur­chase, had agreed to do cer­tain en­hance­ment work at Damen Ship­yard in San­ti­a­go de Cu­ba. The works the sell­er had con­tract­ed to have done have been af­fect­ed by the sell­er’s in­abil­i­ty to get ma­te­ri­als and equip­ment in­to Cu­ba - not the Gov­ern­ment’s in­abil­i­ty to get ma­te­ri­als and equip­ment in­to Cu­ba.”

How­ev­er, he said the en­hance­ments were sole­ly to make the ves­sel more com­fort­able.

In March, a Nid­co state­ment ad­vised that retro­fitting of the ves­sel would oc­cur over10 days dur­ing the lay­over in Cu­ba. This work in­clud­ed a canopy in­stal­la­tion on the ve­hi­cle deck to pro­tect against sea spray, ad­di­tion­al an­chor rings for se­cur­ing ve­hi­cles on deck and seal­ing a gap be­tween the ramp door and ves­sel hull. Some of the works would be paid for by the sell­er, as agreed pre-pur­chase, Nid­co added.

Nid­co said a de­ci­sion was made to make oth­er al­ter­ations while the ves­sel was in Cu­ba and these - cost­ing $2.5m - would be paid for by Gov­ern­ment. These in­volved in­stal­la­tion of full canopies over the sun deck, ad­di­tion­al wash­room fa­cil­i­ties, cafe/bar fa­cil­i­ties, re­mod­el­ling of uri­nals in the men’s wash­room and in­stal­la­tion of fix­ing rails for new con­toured seat­ing on the pas­sen­ger deck. These mod­i­fi­ca­tions were be­ing un­der­tak­en to make the ves­sel more suit­able for its pur­pose, Nid­co said.

In Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Im­bert didn’t say when the boat would leave for T&T, if it’s al­ready on the way or when it would ar­rive here. He told the T&T Guardian via email af­ter­wards that he’d check Nid­co on this.

US$12m on fer­ries main­te­nance

Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan al­so gave the fol­low­ing in­for­ma­tion on the oth­er To­ba­go fer­ries dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­ment sit­ting.

• T&T Spir­it dry­dock­ing cost - US $10.9m

• T&T Ex­press re­pairs and main­te­nance cost - US $808,117

• Pe­ri­od T&T Spir­it was out of ser­vice - May 15, 2017, to April 16, 2018.

• T&T Ex­press was in op­er­a­tion - May 12, 2017, to March 12, 2018.