STEPHON NICHOLAS

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Regi­nald MacLean said sup­plies on the is­land are re­turn­ing to nor­mal.

MacLean was speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day fol­low­ing com­plaints by var­i­ous mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty last month over a dis­rup­tion to the car­go ser­vice on the seabridge.

MacLean pre­vi­ous­ly said hote­liers had to re­vise their menus be­cause they could not get cer­tain food sup­plies from Trinidad.

A hard­ware own­er in Scar­bor­ough yes­ter­day con­firmed that ma­te­r­i­al was ar­riv­ing reg­u­lar­ly to To­ba­go aboard the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny car­go boat and oth­er pas­sen­ger fer­ries.

The com­plaints about the car­go ser­vice be­came vo­cif­er­ous last month af­ter the US$25,000 per day MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny was dam­aged dur­ing sea tri­als.

Me­chan­i­cal is­sues al­so de­layed a num­ber of sail­ings as the boat cap­tain learned the in­ter-is­land route.

The ves­sel has been on a week­ly sched­ule since March 1, sail­ing Mon­day to Fri­day from Trinidad to To­ba­go. The ves­sel de­parts Port-of-Spain at 2 pm and then leaves Port-of-Scar­bor­ough at 11 pm.

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John said she is pleased that To­bag­o­ni­ans are re­port­ing that they can get their items.

“I am like peach por­ridge. I don’t get too hot or too cold. I just don’t like peo­ple to mis­rep­re­sent the facts. Even when that boat was in test­ing, it was go­ing up a full car­go load. The Cabo Star, I be­lieve, the ca­pac­i­ty was 18,000 tonnes. That boat is 23,000 tonnes, just about 5,000 tonnes more than what the Cabo Star was car­ry­ing.”

She said To­ba­go needs ware­hous­es to store at least two to three days’ worth of sup­plies.

“You have a par­tic­u­lar bread com­pa­ny tak­ing bread to To­ba­go every sin­gle day. Tell me, To­bag­o­ni­ans can’t bake bread? Since when To­bag­o­ni­ans can’t bake bread and sell?”

She said even if there was a dis­rup­tion with the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny, there were three or four ves­sels ser­vic­ing the seabridge.

“I nev­er ig­nore peo­ple and what they have to say. I am very en­gaged. Peo­ple said what they had to say, but my du­ty, my role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was to en­sure there was suf­fi­cient ca­pac­i­ty on a time­ly ba­sis.”

How­ev­er, one truck­er said the Cabo Star used to sail to To­ba­go six times per week, in­clud­ing on a Sun­day. He said truck­ers are los­ing a day’s work, and this was af­fect­ing how they op­er­ate and plan their ship­ments.