Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

T&T Scrap Iron Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Al­lan Fer­gu­son is re­new­ing calls for the Gov­ern­ment to sup­port a lo­cal ship-break­ing ini­tia­tive that promis­es to rid na­tion­al wa­ters of derelict and leak­ing ves­sels for just $1.

Fer­gu­son’s pro­pos­al fol­lows the dis­cov­ery of thou­sands of bar­rels of hy­dro­car­bons that were il­le­gal­ly dumped in the hull of an aban­doned long­lin­er ship in an area known as the “Grave­yard” off Ch­aguara­mas on Wednes­day.

The dis­cov­ery was made by Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS), whose cor­po­rate sec­re­tary, Gary Aboud, says the oil was now leak­ing in­to the sea.

Footage shared by the en­vi­ron­men­tal ad­vo­cates showed thick black oil con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the wa­ter.

The dis­cov­ery is now the sub­ject of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs.

“The sit­u­a­tion is now crit­i­cal,” Fer­gu­son said yes­ter­day. “We’ve been try­ing to launch this ship-break­ing project for years. The oil spill in Ch­aguara­mas is just the lat­est ex­am­ple of why some­thing must be done. These aban­doned ships are tick­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal time bombs.”

Fer­gu­son ex­plained that the cen­tre­piece of the ini­tia­tive is the ves­sel Pa­tri­arch, a ship ac­quired in 2021 as part of a broad­er plan to es­tab­lish a full-scale ship-break­ing yard in Trinidad.

The project was halt­ed in 2022 fol­low­ing an in­dus­try shut­down, but sig­nif­i­cant ground­work had al­ready been com­plet­ed.

“We’ve al­ready in­vest­ed mil­lions. We brought in ex­perts from the US, UK, In­dia, Turkey, Pak­istan, and Bangladesh to work with us,” he said.

“This project is ready to go and could em­ploy over 1,000 peo­ple im­me­di­ate­ly.”

Fer­gu­son said the ini­tia­tive could re­move dozens of derelict ves­sels from Ch­aguara­mas and else­where in T&T’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters at a frac­tion of the cost the Gov­ern­ment would typ­i­cal­ly in­cur.

“If the Gov­ern­ment tries to move these ships, they’re talk­ing mil­lions of US dol­lars. We’re say­ing, give us the go-ahead, and we’ll do it for $1. We re­cov­er our costs from the scrap met­al. That’s our busi­ness,” Fer­gu­son said.

He said the project would have en­vi­ron­men­tal safe­guards and the fa­cil­i­ty would be equipped with con­tain­ment mea­sures and cer­ti­fied pro­to­cols to pre­vent oil leaks and chem­i­cal dis­charge.

“We will en­sure not even one drop of oil es­capes in­to the sea. That’s our com­mit­ment. We know how to do this the right way,” Fer­gu­son said.

He added, “We want to start with the ships al­ready here. We don’t need to im­port any ves­sels. This is a home­grown so­lu­tion to a na­tion­al prob­lem.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion has al­ready met with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, the Min­istry of En­er­gy, and the Min­istry of Trade, and Fer­gu­son said the re­sponse from all agen­cies had been pos­i­tive.

“Every sin­gle one of them said the project looked promis­ing,” he said.

“My sec­re­tary sent the let­ter. The min­is­ter has ac­knowl­edged it. We’re ready and just wait­ing for the green light.”

Fer­gu­son added, “Now is the time. Let’s stop wait­ing for dis­as­ter to strike be­fore we act.

“Let us re­move these dan­ger­ous ves­sels, clean up our wa­ters, and cre­ate re­al jobs. All we need is $1 and the Gov­ern­ment’s bless­ing.”