Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Over the last 20 years, the State spent more than $1.5 bil­lion to pur­chase five in­ter-is­land ves­sels, hun­dreds of mil­lions more to lease six oth­ers and re­pair the seabridge.

And dur­ing that time, the ser­vice has al­so been full of con­tro­ver­sies—some linked to de­ci­sions made by po­lit­i­cal par­ties who led the Gov­ern­ment at the time.

But de­spite mon­ey thrown at it, the prob­lem of a re­li­able ser­vice be­tween the To­ba­go seabridge has yet to be con­crete­ly es­tab­lished.

Many To­bag­on­ian stake­hold­ers be­lieve that seabridge is­sues, which they be­lieve have con­tin­ued for too long, have de­nied To­ba­go a le­git­i­mate chance of de­vel­op­ing its econ­o­my.

Busi­ness own­ers said they are now forced to im­port goods and ser­vices in low­er quan­ti­ties and at high­er costs. Some es­ti­mat­ed a 100 per cent in­crease in trans­porta­tion costs.

There are con­cerns that these costs will be like­ly trans­ferred to con­sumers on the is­land as in­fla­tion ris­es, mak­ing the cost of liv­ing sky­rock­et and di­min­ish­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­joy a more com­fort­able life.

Last week, the Cabo Star’s tem­po­rary re­place­ment, the MV Em­prende­do­ra, made its maid­en ten-hour voy­age to To­ba­go on Sep­tem­ber 12 car­ry­ing a gross ton­nage of 1,321.

Com­par­a­tive­ly, the Cabo Star has a car­ry­ing ca­pac­i­ty gross ton­nage of 15 times the Em­prende­do­ra. In a re­cent up­date, the Port Au­thor­i­ty said the Cabo Star should be run­ning again by to­mor­row.

How­ev­er, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan clar­i­fied that while re­pairs are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by Sep­tem­ber 17, that would not be the re­turn date for the ves­sel. He said the port au­thor­i­ty will need to wait un­til the ves­sel is cer­ti­fied be­fore it is al­lowed to re­turn to the seabridge.

An im­proved in­ter-is­land ser­vice, stake­hold­ers said, is crit­i­cal in the is­land’s at­tempts to be­come less eco­nom­i­cal­ly de­pen­dent on Trinidad.

Ac­cord­ing to them, the seabridge re­mains un­de­pend­able and sub­stan­dard.

Some be­lieve that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) ought to be giv­en more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the seabridge by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, but oth­ers dis­agree, claim­ing the THA is in­ca­pable of as­sum­ing such a task.

Trade is­sues

Ac­cord­ing to po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James, To­bag­o­ni­ans are un­hap­py with the seabridge and have been for a long time. He said trade be­tween both is­lands was dam­aged by the shut­down of the Cabo Star, while trust in the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment was fur­ther com­pro­mised.

“If you have one car­go boat ser­vic­ing the trade be­tween the two is­lands, clear­ly you are sug­gest­ing to us that you don’t ex­pect things to go bad. Any­body would tell you that you must have a stand­by mech­a­nism. We didn’t have a stand­by mech­a­nism, did we?

“So the Cabo Star breaks down and To­ba­go, be­cause of this de­pen­den­cy, suf­fers great­ly. Clear­ly, those from Trinidad who are do­ing busi­ness will al­so suf­fer. The point is—why couldn’t you have had mat­ters in place? This thing has been go­ing on by the way for quite a long time. This busi­ness of there be­ing one car­go boat has been go­ing on for a long time,” Dr James lament­ed.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was to blame, adding that it is an­oth­er in­di­ca­tion that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is un­equal to the task. Dr James de­scribed the Gov­ern­ment’s po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy to­wards To­ba­go as sus­pect.

“To­ba­go ought to be in charge of wharves, ports, and so on. The Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment has not giv­en it that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and sim­ply has not giv­en the mon­ey to make things right … We are not talk­ing about in­de­pen­dence here. We are just say­ing let’s di­vide up the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly if you bring a kind of op­por­tunis­tic kind of in­ter­ven­tion—I’m talk­ing about the leas­ing of the boat from Venezuela—they will come and say, well, it’s bet­ter than noth­ing, right? But we are not sat­is­fied with that lev­el of re­lief. Let us man­age our af­fairs in this mat­ter,” Dr James ap­pealed.

Mar­itime ex­pert: These things hap­pen, im­prove the main­te­nance pro­gramme

To­bag­on­ian mar­itime ex­pert Doyle Mc­Dougall, a qual­i­fied har­bour mas­ter with an MBA in Port Man­age­ment and ex­pe­ri­ence at the ports of Port-of-Spain and Scar­bor­ough, said he has seen the seabridge im­prove sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the years. He be­lieves the ser­vice has no prob­lems with the move­ment of peo­ple, but ad­mit­ted that there are prob­lems with car­go. He al­so be­lieves the de­vel­op­ment of a more con­ven­tion­al sys­tem to move goods, ser­vices and peo­ple to­geth­er—as was done in the past—would like­ly im­prove op­er­a­tions.

“In gen­er­al, noth­ing is go­ing wrong with the man­age­ment of the sys­tem. What we have to do is con­tin­ue to im­prove the sys­tem and find ways and means to make it more ef­fec­tive. We are deal­ing with crafts that from time to time will ex­pe­ri­ence chal­lenges in the chal­leng­ing wa­ters be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go. We have to do prop­er main­te­nance. We need to im­prove the main­te­nance pro­gramme.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, some­thing hap­pened. If some­thing hap­pened to your ves­sel then now, you ac­ti­vate oth­er ves­sels to fill, un­til you can rec­ti­fy the prob­lem … It’s not that you can have a car­go ves­sel parked up as if you ex­pect some­thing to hap­pen. These are things you don’t do. It’s on­ly when some­thing hap­pens, you hear about a con­tin­gency plan. Ship­ping is a dy­nam­ic op­er­a­tion,” he said, sug­gest­ing that maybe the whole in­ci­dent was be­ing blown out of pro­por­tion.

Mc­Dougall said it was im­por­tant that lessons are learned from the fall­out. Stake­hold­ers must as­sess and do more long-term as­sess­ments for fu­ture sit­u­a­tions, he said.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that a younger car­go ves­sel may need to be ac­quired be­fore long, as the ac­tu­al life of a car­go ves­sel is 25 years.

The Cabo Star is 35 years old.

Six years of con­tro­ver­sies on the seabridge

The Cabo Star fall­out comes five years af­ter the 2018 seabridge col­lapse.

The T&T Ex­press, the lone fast fer­ry op­er­at­ing at the time, was pulled from ser­vice ‘in the in­ter­est of pub­lic safe­ty’. At the same time, the oth­er fast fer­ry, the T&T Spir­it, was out of ser­vice in June 2017. This left one avail­able ves­sel—the Cabo Star. To fill the gap, one of the San Fer­nan­do to Port-of-Spain wa­ter taxis ser­viced the route for a week. Dur­ing one of its jour­neys to Trinidad, smoke start­ed to emit from the boat, re­sult­ing in the pas­sen­gers on­board be­ing res­cued. The T&T Spir­it fast fer­ry re­turned to the route in April and the Gov­ern­ment an­nounced the ar­rival of the Galleons Pas­sage in Ju­ly.

The Galleons Pas­sage did not go in­to ser­vice un­til Oc­to­ber. Then af­ter just two weeks of ser­vice, the Galleons Pas­sage had to un­der­go re­pairs. It was a col­lapse which left many To­ba­go busi­ness­es with huge loss­es—prompt­ing the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce to ex­press con­cern about the man­age­ment of the Port Au­thor­i­ty and the length of time the is­sue lin­gered.

“The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion—which The TTCIC To­ba­go Di­vi­sion tried to pre­vent from hap­pen­ing since De­cem­ber 2015—has not come about sud­den­ly; rather, it has been a steady de­cline. It is abun­dant­ly clear that there was an ab­sence of any short- or medi­um-term plan­ning sur­round­ing the en­tire in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice,” a TTCIC re­lease stat­ed.

Be­fore the col­lapse of the seabridge in 2018, the Gov­ern­ment or­dered a pas­sen­ger fer­ry owned by Bridge­man’s Ser­vices Group–the Ocean Flower II, and it was ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in T&T in Ju­ly 2017. How­ev­er, af­ter an ar­rival date ex­ten­sion was grant­ed, the ves­sel failed to ar­rive in Trinidad in­to the con­trac­tu­al­ly ob­lig­at­ed pe­ri­od and the Gov­ern­ment can­celled the con­tract.

Sinanan in­sist­ed that the con­tract’s ter­mi­na­tion would not af­fect the in­ter-is­land ser­vice, say­ing that the T&T Spir­it, T&T Ex­press and the Cabo Star were avail­able. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so ex­pressed con­cerns that cor­rup­tion may have been present in the pro­cure­ment of the Ocean Flower II.

In Au­gust 2017, busi­ness­man Chris­t­ian Mout­tet was ap­point­ed to in­ves­ti­gate and pro­duce a re­port on the pro­cure­ment of the Cabo Star and the Ocean Flower II ves­sels. The re­port was de­liv­ered to the PM and laid in Par­lia­ment.

In April 2017, the agents of the Su­per­fast Gali­cia car­go fer­ry, In­ter­na­tion­al Ship­ping Lim­it­ed with­drew the ves­sel from in­ter-is­land ser­vice. At the time, it was the on­ly des­ig­nat­ed car­go fer­ry. The Gov­ern­ment took le­gal ac­tion against In­ter­na­tion­al Ship­ping Lim­it­ed for breach of con­tract and ma­rine at­tor­ney Nyree Al­fon­so for breach of fidu­cia­ry du­ty.

Costs as­so­ci­at­ed with ac­quir­ing in­ter-is­land ves­sels since 2004

• The Cat–Lease cost was not dis­closed

• The Lynx–Lease cost was not dis­closed

• M V So­nia–Leased at $162,000 a day–More than $66 mil­lion in to­tal

• In­cat 060 (Be­came The T&T Spir­it)–$290 mil­lion

• The Lynx (Be­came T&T Ex­press)–$126 mil­lion

• Su­per Fast Gali­cia–Around $48 mil­lion a year to lease–More than $100 mil­lion in to­tal

• Cabo Star–Ini­tial­ly leased at a cost of $152,000 a day. Lat­er re­duced to $142,500 a day, then fur­ther re­duced to $108,000 a day

• Ocean Flower II–Con­tract Can­celled

• The Galleons Pas­sage–$118 mil­lion

• Jean De La Val­lette–Leased at $263,580 a day

• Buc­coo Reef–$494 mil­lion

• APT James–$498 mil­lion

Part 2 to­mor­row